


Aria

by museaway



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Canon Universe, Falling In Love, Illustrated, Katsudon Bang 2017, M/M, and a lot of snuggling, character driven, first person POV, season one from Viktor's point of view
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 06:36:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 48,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10551724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museaway/pseuds/museaway
Summary: Have you ever thought about love? How it finds you, how it ensnares you? The agony of loss, the sweetness of something new, the dizzy-drunk feeling of being willingly lost in another person?There are so many kinds, so many different ways to love. My name is Viktor Nikiforov and this is the story of mine.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains all of my headcanons about Victor Nikiforov. They're probably not the same as yours, but I hope you can enjoy them in context. 
> 
> Some dialogue and text is taken directly from the show and is a combination of the subtitled and dubbed English translations, massaged with a little artistic license. Since Yuri is an unreliable narrator, it’s fair to assume he might have misrepresented some of Victor’s comments, so I’ve altered the wording in a couple spots. 
> 
> I’ve never been to Japan, so details about life there came from hours of YouTube videos. The majority of Russian details are from my dear friend Sasha in Moscow, who patiently answered a long list of questions. I’m so grateful for the little details she provided, like Victor leaving his spoon in his teacup. Where possible, hotel and restaurant details are accurate. Since we have no backstory on Victor, I made one up. Please excuse my Western lens; I did my best to detach from it. 
> 
> _A note on spelling:_ Sasha said Victor would spell his name as “Viktor” in the English alphabet (in the Cyrillic alphabet, it's spelled Виктор), so his name is spelled "Viktor" throughout since this is told in first person. Apart from that, I spelled names as they're written in the English subtitles. 
> 
> Bonus points to anyone who spots the nod to a signature move of my literary idol. ♥

Have you ever thought about love? How it finds you, how it ensnares you? The agony of loss, the sweetness of something new, the dizzy-drunk feeling of being willingly lost in another person?

There are so many kinds, so many different ways to love. My name is Viktor Nikiforov and this is the story of mine.

* * *

Most people don’t know that I was considered sickly as a child. Doctors feared I wouldn’t survive past childhood, and so I spent many days in clinics being poked and prodded, or kept home where I could be looked after for fear of a weak immune system.

Following my father’s death, my mother had no choice but to send me to kindergarten during the day while she worked. We couldn’t afford in-home care. I stayed there sometimes eight or ten hours a day, and took my meals with children who teased me because I looked different. For months, I begged my mother to let me wear hats to hide my strange hair, but hats weren't permitted indoors. By the time I entered primary school, I’d learned to turn a deaf ear toward insults.

My mother fussed over me, her only child, determined that I have every experience she could afford while I was alive. I had long admired the costumed figure skaters on TV and so to celebrate my sixth birthday, she woke me early and took me to a city ice rink not far from the metro station. She rented a pair of brown figure skates for two hours.

Ice is a deceptively beautiful mistress. We were not always allies. The first time I stepped onto it, I couldn't get my balance. My legs scissored underneath me and I fell. There was pain in my hands and my back. I’d sat down hard. But worse than the physical pain was the bitter sense that the ice had betrayed me. It wouldn't be the first time it got the upper hand.

I didn’t cry. Determined, I pulled my hat tightly over my ears and got back up. Clenching my mother's hand, I took careful steps on the ice, like a child's first steps, and the sound! The sound of the blades cutting across the surface was music.

Around us people skated alone and in pairs, some backwards and serpentine. A girl scarcely older than I was moved faster than the rest. Her skates were white and her cheeks were red from cold. She smiled and performed single jumps, landing them to scattered applause.

I had never seen anything so enchanting! For the rest of our time there, I skated circles around her and watched what she created on the ice.

* * *

That winter, I begged my mother to go skating again. With the cost we couldn’t afford to go often, but I cherished the sparse times I laced up borrowed skates.

One afternoon, a tall, square-jawed man with dark hair in a long coat approached my mother at the rink and said he was a retired professional skater. A coach. He offered group instruction twice a week for a small fee, and although we could not afford it, my mother committed herself to longer hours at work and agreed.

Mikhail taught me the basics of skating: how to move forward and back on two feet and then on one, how to stop, how to turn. The first time he instructed me to jump a few inches above the surface of the ice, my heart beat with newfound purpose. It was a far cry from what I would accomplish, but it was a beginning.

No one laughed at me on the ice and my skills developed rapidly. Within months, I’d mastered what others my age continued to struggle with, and Mikhail placed me alongside his older students.

“You have a knack for this, Viktor,” he said seriously, taking me aside after my first advanced class. “If you work hard, you might qualify for the regional championships in a few years. It would mean dedication, long hours of practice. More than you’re putting in now. You would spend your free time here, you understand?”

I nodded.

“Do you know what sacrifice means?” he asked.

I lied and said I did.

He chuckled at my obstinence. “It means giving up things that are important to you in order to achieve something greater. Not everyone is willing to do that.”

I stuck my toe pick in the ice. “I will be great.”

He smiled at me through crinkled brown eyes I can still see, though he passed on ten summers back. “Then we have a lot of work to do.”

A few months later, he recommended me to a coach who could work with me privately, and my mother was faced with another decision: allow me to move forward with what Mikhail thought could be a competitive career, or say no.

I don't know if my mother believed him, but just shy of eight years old I saw nothing but possibility and pleaded for the chance. I think she agreed because she was still afraid she only had a short window of time with me. Little did she know that was the beginning of a twenty-year career.

But I’ve run away with my memories. You're not here to read an autobiography of my life in figure skating. I imagine you’re interested in my love affair with a certain Japanese skater who changed the direction of my life in a single evening.

* * *

When you've been in the public’s eye as long as I have, you build a wall around yourself. Figure skating gave me such confidence that I stopped wearing hats by the time I turned eight, and I let my hair grow long—longer than any girl’s! By ten years old it had reached my waist.

I surpassed my skill exams. Three months after my eleventh birthday, I was eligible to compete in the youngest age division for the Championship of Russia. I came in sixteenth and had my first bitter taste of disappointment. Had Mikhail been wrong about me? Had the last two years of work been a waste?

Then Yakov came. I spent six weeks at his summer camp, the winter under his instruction, and returned the following season with a righteous determination.

After winning the Russian Junior Nationals at fifteen, I began to compete in seven or eight championships in a calendar year. The prize money in skating is not great. If I’d wanted to be wealthy, I should’ve become a tennis player! I supplemented my modest income by agreeing to small endorsements and photo shoots. Imagine posters of me on someone’s wall! My hair, once a point of embarrassment, had become iconic.

(Years later, I would cut it just to shock people.)

Since we were no longer pressed for money, we were able to afford a larger apartment in a better section of town, closer to the rink. Access to better medical care revealed that my condition was not life-threatening after all, merely cosmetic. I would live a long, full life. My mother cried when they told us. It was the only time I’ve ever seen her shed tears.

As the federation and the international community became aware of my promise as a top skater, my face appeared on the internet, on blogs and forums, in magazines. Even television! They’d heard of me across Europe, in America, in Canada. It was easy to be dazzled by the attention, but as my fame ballooned, at school the teasing grew polarized.

“People who behave cruelly are jealous, Vitya,” my mother said when I confided in her. “Try to find compassion for them.”

I quickly realized that many people spoke to me only because of my growing reputation. Like insects drawn toward light. Desperate for companions, I accepted what I hoped was friendship, and sometimes the offers were genuine. Sometimes they weren’t genuine. Often, people expected me to be the person they saw on television.

My second coach, Elena, a spindly woman with deep wrinkles around her lips, once said I couldn't afford bad days. People were not interested in whether I was sick or hurt or disappointed or happy. They only wanted to stand beside the light. It was even this way among my fellow skaters: they wanted their face in the same photograph as an Olympic medalist.

Yuri was never like that.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Yuri and I formally met for the first time at the Sochi Grand Prix banquet, but that wasn't the first time I'd heard of him. We’d been at the Skating Palace all weekend together, even though we hadn't spoken yet, and naturally I’d seen his name a handful of times in the months leading up to the event. He’d competed in qualifying rounds against friends of mine, and it has always been my practice to vet my competition.

I’d looked up videos of him. I’d been surprised that he’d qualified for the final. He had an unpolished, inconsistent style but there was something pleasing in the way his body moved. I’d never trained with Celestino, but I knew enough to recognize his influence. I could see my own as well, in the particular way Yuri lifted his chin and chest, the majestic sweep of his arm. So he was a fan—and had been for some time, I suspected. It’s funny to see yourself reflected in other people. Yuri was not a poor skater but had a disconnect from his programs, as if they were not his and he merely performed them.

The real miracle was that I’d recognized him immediately—the same sad expression as that worn by a skater in a short interview I’d read about a year earlier. Of course I’d forgotten his name and where I’d read it, but the picture had made an indelible impression, and I couldn’t believe my good luck, finding him like this! I’d be able to thank him for the inspiration he’d provided. But every time I’d begun to approach him, his coach appeared to sweep him away.

You could say I have a sixth sense for being able to tell when someone has their eyes on me. It results from a frightening incident outside of a club when I was nineteen. I considered hiring a bodyguard for a while, but the trouble only happened around competitions where people knew who I was. I learned never to drink too much around strangers and always be aware of my surroundings.

Following the Grand Prix Final, spectators gathered outside the Skating Palace in the snow, waiting for us to come outside so they could request photographs and autographs. My team was preparing to return to our hotel when we stopped in the lobby. Yakov was reprimanding Yuri Plisetsky and I had that prickly feeling on my skin like I was being watched. I turned my head and, sure enough, Yuri Katsuki was looking in my direction.

He looks different off the ice. At first I hardly recognized him: hair falling across his forehead, eyes magnified by a pair of blue glasses. Younger than the person whose performances I had studied, younger than the photograph.

He gasped to be caught staring and his ears turned red. I smiled. He probably wanted his picture taken with me. It was what most people wanted; why should he be any different? It was an opening to conversation. Yuri would stand next to me, we would both smile, and I would ask him to send me a copy of the picture for Instagram so I had his contact information.

“A commemorative photo?” I said. “Why not.”

Instead of accepting my offer, something pained sliced across Yuri’s face. Without a word to me, he walked away.

I watched him go and pored over what I’d just said. Had he misunderstood? English was our common ground since my Japanese was rudimentary. Sometimes when I’m tired, simple words escape me, but I was certain I hadn’t said anything offensive. It was more likely that I’d seemed arrogant, offering a photograph so soon after his loss. I hadn't watched his long program, but I'd heard enough from whispers in the lobby to know how it had gone. “A shame,” Chris Giacometti had said.

Yurio (he hadn’t earned that nickname yet, but it will be less confusing if I call him by it) looked past me to Yuri’s shrinking form and scoffed.

“That _loser_. I found him crying in the bathroom like a baby.”

I thought of myself at nine years old determined to land an axel: exhausted to the brink of tears, feet bruised inside my skates. I’d tried again and again and again and hadn’t cried after, not even when I’d seen blood on my socks. I didn’t cry after my first competitive loss or when I cut off my hair, or when I unlocked the apartment after my mother had moved away and there was no one to welcome me home. I wasn’t a robot, but two decades of public scrutiny had created an expert in self control. That didn’t mean I’d never had the desire to weep.

“Don’t be unkind,” I said. “Go and greet your fans.”

“ _You_ greet them,” said Yurio.

“I have my own.”

He _tssked_ at me but a moment later obeyed.

The rectangular glass panels on the Skating Palace flashed various shades of blue and outside, Yuri Katsuki dragged his suitcase away from me through the snow.

  
illustration by Ludicrouslyidiotic

* * *

I don't know why it stuck with me, but for the rest of the night, Yuri’s rejection was forefront in my mind. I wanted to apologize, but I didn’t know his room number and was hesitant to ask for it at the front desk.

“He’ll be at the banquet tomorrow,” Chris reminded me as I sulked at the hotel bar.

“You’re right.” I raised my glass. “Cheers.”

* * *

The next day, I slept in and spent the morning exploring Sochi with Chris, then went back to sleep until an hour before the exhibition (leather, glitter). I was disappointed when I didn’t see Yuri there and feared he’d flown home in advance of the banquet.

Banquets are a necessary part of a skater's life, a networking event with free alcohol. I'm expected to wear a suit and tie and be on my best behavior. All I wanted that night was to board the next flight back to St. Petersburg. I hadn't seen my dog in what felt like weeks. That time of the year, it was better for him to be in someone else’s care. I missed his snoring. I missed my apartment and sleeping in my own bed.

But the gold medalist was expected to attend. If I was lucky, Yuri was still in Russia and would be there too. I put on my best grey suit and a smile.

To my delight, he arrived with his Italian coach not long after I did. He was a portrait of misery. He had shadows under his eyes and kept his head down. He spoke to no one but his coach. An apology was in order. If I’d offended him, I wanted to correct it, though after his reaction to me the day before, I wasn't sure how I should approach him.

About an hour into the event, I noticed him alone at the champagne table throwing back glass after glass. He’d taken off his glasses, loosened his tie and unbuttoned his shirt at the throat. His skin was already beginning to glow with perspiration and his lips were the deep pink of a thorough kiss.

I’d seen plenty of skaters drink too much because of nerves, but people were watching Yuri. People with influence in the sport. I wasn't sure he'd been to one of these banquets before—not one of this size, anyway—and considered it a professional courtesy to intervene.

I walked up to him and cleared my throat. “Hello, Yuri. I didn’t see you at the exhibition.”

He stared up at me through shocked brown eyes and his mouth formed the shape of my name. His dark hair stuck to his forehead. He pushed it back with a hand.

“Viktor,” he said out loud. My name from his lips will forever be my favorite sound.

He jabbed me in the chest with his forefinger and slurred something I couldn’t understand, but he smiled when he spoke. His smile was so endearing, I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Would you like water?” I asked, making sure to enunciate as clearly as possible.

“ _You_ ,” he said, the first word I’d understood besides my name, and he paused for breath, planting his palm flat against my chest to steady himself. There was a wildness to his expression. He licked his lips. “You have glitter in your hair.”

“It’s from this afternoon.”

“I know. I watched you. Come dance with me.”

With a glance at the people around us, I gently removed his hand and pulled out the nearest chair. “Please sit down.”

He moved his head lazily side to side in a defiant swoop, though he clutched the back of the chair with both hands.

“Have you eaten?” I asked. He made a smaller shaking motion with his head this time. “Stay here. I’ll bring you something.”

He beamed and nodded, but when I returned with a plate of food he wasn't where I’d left him, and from the whooping noise on the dance floor I had a suspicion of where he'd gone.

There is an unspoken rule that if improper behavior does crop up at these events, it doesn't go beyond the banquet hall. Still, I'm surprised none of the photographs or videos taken that night made their way onto social media. Chris must have taken fifty.

When he noticed me approaching the excitement, Yakov cast me a stern look, so I kept to the edge of the dance floor and photographed the fierce competition between the two Yuris. Yurio appeared angry and confused by the way Yuri’s body moved in time with the music, and I could see why. It was utterly unlike the way I’d seen him move on ice: fluid, organic. If he'd skated the way he danced, he might have had a chance to medal. Occasionally he caught my eye, but unlike the way we had stared at one another in the lobby, here he looked fearless. He’d had considerable dance training, and Yurio, whose temper was naturally short because of his age, eventually stomped off the dance floor in defeat.

When he went out to find the bathrooms, Chris discovered there had been an American-style stag party in the next banquet room. After it broke up, he paid the dancer for the use of her pole. Chris and Yuri Katsuki were the only two brave enough to try it, stripping down to their underwear in a nearly pornographic display that a part of me desired to join. But with the remainder of the season ahead of me and the possibility of angering sponsors, I abstained. If I did decide to retire, I would need that money.

I couldn't take my eyes off Yuri. I don't think anyone in the room could take their eyes off of him. Chris was a good-looking man, but Yuri was gorgeous in fitted black briefs that offset his pale skin, his thighs lean and toned. His socks slouched around his ankles and a blue tie hung loose at his throat. He and Chris moved with each other effortlessly and I burned with envy. My god, I hadn’t had sex in an eternity.

A representative of the hotel came in after Yuri sprayed a third bottle of champagne on the dance floor and demanded that we keep down the noise. The dance pole was taken out. Yuri put his shirt back on and fashioned his tie around his forehead, but his legs were still gloriously bare. Someone had given him water that he drank leaning up against the wall. He’d found his glasses. Since the crowd had thinned, and Yakov had drunk enough that he’d actually removed his hat and coat and settled into conversation, I threw back a hundred dollars’ worth of champagne.

Yuri was so caught up the music, he didn’t notice me standing next to him at first, not until Chris shouted for me to bring him a glass of champagne. Yuri turned toward me.

“Did you change your mind?” he said. His slurred English was charming but difficult to understand. His shirt hung open, wrinkled and damp with sweat. I watched him evenly.

“I’ve already beaten you,” I said, tossing my head.

He licked his lips and glanced to the dance floor. “Not here.”

“I defeated you on the ice. What makes you think I won’t defeat you here as well?”

“So dance with me,” he said.

His persistence was intriguing. I liked that he wasn't intimidated by me, that he challenged me the same as he challenged the rest of them, but I wasn't going to give into him that easily. I swept the hair from my eyes. “What’s the benefit to me if I win?”

The music changed to something slower. He set down his glass and stepped closer, bringing his mouth to my ear as though he intended to divulge a secret. His palms were hot through my jacket where he leaned against me, his breath hot in my ear.

“That’s not the question you should ask, Viktor.”

Shivering, I swallowed and put a hand on his waist to steady him, to steady myself. “Oh? What should I be asking?”

“What will happen when you lose.”

I grinned against his cheek. “Where was this confidence while you were skating?”

He pulled away from me. His eyes, when shocked, open very wide. “You’ve seen me skate?” he asked, as though he’d never considered the possibility. I didn’t know what that said about me.

“Does that surprise you?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I’m sorry you wasted your time.”

I frowned. “What makes you think it was a waste?”

He coughed bitter laughter but didn’t wipe away his tears. There were no napkins left on the table to offer him, and I had no idea why he was crying.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, tensing. “Was it something I said?”

He somehow nodded and shook his head simultaneously. “It’s nothing. I’ve heard that you’re nice.”

“I try to be.” I brushed a piece of hair off of his forehead. “Is it working?”

“Maybe.” Leaning into me again, he put his mouth to my ear. “I have your posters on my wall.”

“Really? How many?”

“A dozen?”

The champagne had taken the edge off my propriety. Yuri was beautiful and I had been coaxed into bed with less. “And how do I compare in person?” I asked.

Instead of answering, he began to rub against me like a cat, grinding against my thigh, and slid one hand into my hair. It had been months since someone touched me. If we’d been at a club, I might’ve acted in kind, but I could feel the eyes on us, the damning glare of camera screens.

“What’s the consequence if I lose?” I asked to distract him.

He stilled against my leg. The next words he spoke were rapidly, excitedly in Japanese but his lewd behavior had already drawn everyone’s attention. Like vultures, they circled us. I kept still, lest Yuri fall, lest I appear entranced by him.

I expected a proposition: to be asked back to his room, for him to invite himself to mine or drag me to the nearest bathroom, at the very least a request for the photograph he’d rejected yesterday. What he did was throw his arms around my neck, squeezing me as tightly as my mother had the day I left our home to live with Yakov and his wife.

“Be my coach,” Yuri said in English.

It's not uncommon for a skater to graduate to a coach in retirement, but just days shy of twenty-seven I hadn't considered it. No professional in his right mind would hire a coach so young, but Yuri was not in his right mind. He was making a spectacle of himself in front of his peers. Chris had his camera out filming. I shook my head when he caught my eye and he lowered it.

Yuri’s words had stolen my breath. “Where are your pants?” I whispered.

He looked dazedly around us. “I—I don’t know.”

“Put them on and I’ll dance with you. That’s what you want, right?”

He nodded against my neck. “You smell good,” he said.

It took every bit of self control not to kiss him. “Pants,” I said.

The last time I’d danced for pleasure had been at a friend’s wedding the year before. I happened to be in Russia at the time and was able to attend. That's the problem with traveling so much for work; it's hard to maintain steady relationships. I used to worry Makkachin would forget me.

I intended a true competition and mirrored Yuri’s movements, tapping into my years of ballet training. I can play my body the way a skilled musician plays an instrument. I know its strengths, its limitations, but Yuri was a fine dancer. The look of ferocity on his face told me he was determined to win, and although I had no intention of moving to Japan to be his coach regardless of the outcome, I was determined to see he didn't.

But then he caught my eye across the dance floor. He formed his fingers into horns and gave me a look I knew well. Men and women have given me that look for as long as I can remember. I liked it on him. I liked the way his eyes narrowed to slivers, how his tongue slipped out between his lips. Whipping off my jacket, I lured him like a matador.

I didn’t realize at the time, I was the one who had been lured.

* * *

The banquet broke up well past midnight, later than any banquet I’d attended. Bored hotel staff hovered at the edges of the room like house flies waiting for us to depart. With the music off and the lights up, it was apparent how exhausted Yuri was, how badly he needed a shower and sleep. His shirt was stained and stuck to his chest. The adrenaline was beginning to work from his system. Beneath his eyes, shadows had crept back in and he’d begun to yawn.

Had he eaten anything at all? The pizza had long congealed and been taken out, but Sochi was a large city and the hotel catered to an international clientele. I could order him something.

The banquet had been held in the same hotel where the competitors were staying, so I sat Yuri on a chair and instructed him to wait for me while I said my goodbyes. I wanted to be certain he got to his room safely. I could imagine what people would think, seeing us leave together after the way Yuri had acted toward me. They could believe what they wanted. I wasn’t the playboy magazines liked to claim, but I made an easy target. The truth was that my enduring bed partner had four paws and, the night of the banquet, was 2,300 kilometers away in St. Petersburg.

I sought out everyone I’d spoken to that evening and shook their hands, then walked Yuri to the elevator. I balanced his glasses on his nose. They’d ended up in my jacket pocket. The lenses were smudged from his fingertips.

“Did I win?” he asked, needlessly pressing the illuminated call button over and over.

“If you have to ask, the answer is no.” I captured his hand to stop him. “Do you remember your room number?”

He did, but he hadn’t remembered his key, lost somewhere amidst his disrobing. I took him down to the concierge desk to have it replaced, arranged for a tray of food to be delivered to his room in the morning and charged to mine, and rode with him up to his floor.

He stood on his own in the center of the elevator, one foot on either side of a grout line. Once we began to move, the unsteadiness returned to his legs and they went out from under him as they had done on the ice. I caught him around the middle as one might catch a dance partner, gallantly.

I kept hold of the key card and unlocked his door for him. He’d booked the standard room available to all competitors—how adorable!—with a double bed and a window overlooking the city.

“Can you manage on your own?” I asked.

He gave a jerky nod and stumbled out of his shoes, staring at me through reddened eyes. He rocked forward onto his toes, too drunk to kiss. I touched his chest to halt his advance.

“I want you to eat the food they bring you in the morning,” I said.

He embraced me again, tucking his face into the curve of my neck, skin clammy now that he wasn’t fever hot. He’d used the hotel’s shampoo earlier; it still smelled faintly of grapefruit. I had brought my own.

“Thank you,” he mumbled against my skin.

I shut my eyes. Yuri needed to shower but would fall on his own. Short of taking off my own clothes to assist him, which would only lead to both of us in his bed, there was no way for him to do it safely. I held him with one arm and with the other, pulled back the sheets and blankets.

“Can you take your pants off on your own? Here, give me your hand. No, leave those on—oh. All right. Yes, it will be more comfortable. You're right. Now lie down.”

He blinked up at me from his cocoon of pillows. His smile became something more familiar, something inviting, the way it had been when music thrummed under us and his hands were on me. Keeping my distance, I buttoned my jacket.

“It was a pleasure meeting you, Yuri,” I said with as much sincerity as I could, but I might have said the world was ending for the sudden despair in his eyes.

He reached for me, an unsteady hand in the space between us.

“Don’t go,” he said on the coattails of a sob.

If alcohol was a wave of pleasure, Yuri was on the backside. Sighing, I laid my hand across his forehead and gently, gently pulled my fingers through his hair, as if he were a child.

“Do you return home tomorrow?” I asked.

“I have an overnight flight.”

“And where are you flying?”

He thought for a moment. “Moscow and then New York.”

I cocked my head. “You don’t live in Japan?”

“I train in Detroit,” he said. “I go to college there. I haven’t been home in five years.”

“You must miss it.”

He began to cry again. “It’s near the ocean. I’ll show you if you’ll come. Please say you’ll come! I graduate soon.”

“And if I did?” I asked to humor him. “How would I find you?”

“My family owns the last hot spring in Hasetsu. Yu-topia Katsuki.”

“A hot spring? That’s the opposite of ice.” I stroked his cheek. He whimpered when I took my hand away. “Go to sleep, Yuri. I’m having breakfast in the hotel restaurant with Chris before I leave tomorrow. Join us if you feel well enough. Nine o'clock.”

“ _Dasvidaniya_ ,” he said, sweetly accented. He shut his eyes; I shut off the light and shut the door behind me, and with a hand to my throat, left him to sleep.

* * *

I woke to a pounding headache and a message from Chris saying he was waiting for me downstairs. He’d reserved a table in the back of the restaurant, next to a window where we wouldn’t be disturbed, and had ordered tea that he was depleting by the gulp when I discovered him. His hair was wet from the shower. He wore a pair of pink-tinted sunglasses and a crooked smile.

“ _Someone_ didn’t get his beauty sleep,” he said, leaning his chin against one hand and using the other to pour milk into his tea.

I fell in across from him and rubbed my eyes. “I must’ve deactivated my alarm.”

“Mmm. I heard that you escorted the Lord of the Dance back to his room last night.”

I bristled at the implication and poured a cup for myself. “I was concerned for him.”

Chris’s spoon created a stain on the tablecloth; I left my teaspoon in the cup as I drank.

“I think you are too chivalrous for your own good,” he said.

I glanced toward the host’s stand but there was no sign of Yuri, no one waiting for a table. “You haven’t seen him, have you? I invited him to join us.”

“Unfortunately not. Should we call him?”

“I don’t have his number,” I admitted. Why hadn’t I thought to ask for it last night? “Do you?”

Chris shook his head. “We could ring his room.”

“Let him sleep. I’m starving. The food last night was awful. Ugh, that reminds me—I have to go food shopping when I get home. I have nothing in my apartment. What are you ordering?”

If Yuri employed social media, we couldn't find his account on any network, though there were pictures of him in Detroit posted by a Thai skater I had yet to face. To my relief, only a few tasteful images from the night before had been posted to Instagram. Chris and I had both been tagged in them. We spent the whole of breakfast comparing our photo streams.

“Did you take all of these?” I asked. There had to be a hundred from last night alone.

“No, most are from Yuri Plisetsky. I think he has a crush. He kept messaging them to me. My god, how many pictures do you have of your dog? _Viktor_ , this is why you are still single.”

I’d apparently taken a blurry picture of Yuri’s face, flushed with exertion, while he was pushing the hair back from his eyes. Gazing at it, I felt the way I do before I step onto the ice for a competition, the same nervous flutter in my stomach, the sense of electricity under my skin, like being touched by a spirit. How could a photograph of a man I scarcely knew, whose words to me had been broken and slurred, whose hands I could still feel on my thigh and gripped tight in my hair, elicit such a feeling?

I’d never had time for sweethearts, nothing long-term. Marriage was for retirement. If I wanted to maintain my standing and finish the season as a champion, I could not afford the distraction of a lover. But looking at the photograph, I had the irrational desire to walk away from everything—my training, my career—and travel to the island he’d spoken of to see what I could make of him. Makkachin would enjoy living so near the beach, and I had spent a lifetime traveling abroad. It wouldn’t be so strange.

I laughed at my foolishness but retained the photograph.

Chris advanced to an image of Yuri’s naked legs clamped around the dance pole and it required a deep breath to maintain my composure. Beneath the table, Chris nudged my foot. “Who would have guessed he had _that_ in him?”

“Promise me you won’t make these public,” I said, inclining my head to conceal the incriminating heat in my face. Chris scoffed and flapped a hand at me.

“Viktor, _please_. I don't have a death wish for my own relationship. Do you want copies of any?”

I wanted them all. “No,” I sighed and signaled for more tea.

“I can't remember the last time there was a banquet this exciting. Are you going to make good on your wager?”

“Are you saying he won?”

“Are you saying he _didn’t_?”

I sniffed and ate a piece of buttered roll. “What kind of coach would I be?”

“A sexually frustrated one. I don't know how you resisted him last night. I wouldn't have had your restraint.”

“When have you ever had restraint?” I said.

Chris raised one eyebrow. “You didn’t complain that time at the Worlds.”

“I was twenty. I was … what’s the expression? A walking hormone.”

“And it was good, yes?” Chris said. “But you never looked at me like this.” He tapped the phone lying on the table between us. On the screen, Yuri’s hand was in my hair and I was laughing.

I looked away.

“Don’t tell me you aren’t tempted,” Chris said.

“To coach him?”

He snorted. “If that’s what you’d like to call it. When is the last time you had someone?”

I found myself suddenly annoyed and cinched my jacket tightly at the throat. “I’ve been focused on my career.”

“It was not a judgment. I merely find it curious this isn’t more important to you.”

“Have you considered you might be a nymphomaniac?” I asked casually.

Chris sighed and stirred his tea with the wrong end of a fork. “It's settled. You can't be his coach. I would miss you too much if you retired.”

“What time are you leaving for the airport?”

“Closer to lunch. I thought I would take advantage of the late checkout and enjoy the hot tub. Will you join me?”

* * *

The spa’s water reeked of chlorine but eased the tension from my muscles and back. I would have to shower a second time today to rinse the chemicals from my skin, but I would undoubtedly sleep well on the plane ride home that afternoon.

I’d once visited an onsen during a trip to Sapporo for the NHK Trophy. What would it be like to have access to one every day? Would Yuri and I bathe together? And if we did, would it be a sensual experience? Is that why he’d mentioned it?

“Who are _you_ thinking about, with that smirk on your face? Or do I even have to ask,” Chris said. He’d rolled a bath towel into a log and was using it as a neck pillow.

“I was thinking about how easily I beat you.”

Chris rolled his eyes and flicked water at me with the back of his hand. “If you want to see him again so badly, why don't we just go up to his room?”

I went on the pretense of inquiring about his well-being, but Yuri didn't answer when we knocked. A receipt from the hotel was slipped partially beneath the door.

“He must have already checked out,” Chris said, sticking out his lip in disappointment. “Ah, well. I don't suppose you want to shower with me before I finish packing.”

I rubbed my forehead. “Does your boyfriend know that you proposition everyone?”

The breakfast tray I had ordered was on the floor in the hallway, well picked over, golden streaks of egg yolk still liquid on the plate. Perhaps Yuri had forgotten about my invitation or perhaps he had ignored it. Either way, it was clear I had not left as great an impression on him as he had on me.

But he had woken up safely and he’d eaten the food I ordered for him. That would have to satisfy me.


	3. Chapter 3

Imagine a weathered door leading to the most magnificent garden you can picture. You wouldn't have known it existed if not for a ribbon of light underneath, if it hadn't fallen off its hinges, affording you a glimpse beyond the mundane.

You thought you'd seen splendor in your life, in the bridges that stitch St. Petersburg together, the preserved gleam of imperial architecture, but this beauty is untamed, wild and lush, so green it sets your heart racing. What a skilled gardener could do here! What someone with vision could make of this unspoiled place!

Yuri is that garden. He is also the door preventing access to it.

* * *

After I returned home to St. Petersburg, I thought of asking Yakov for Coach Celestino's phone number. I'd seen them return from the bar together on multiple occasions when we were traveling; I knew he had it even though they pretend to bicker and dislike one another. Beneath his overcoat, Yakov is surprisingly tender. I’ll never forget the weeks of red around his eyes when he and Lilia divorced.

As the days since the banquet grew in number, so grew my doubt that it was wise to nurture my infatuation, that anything which had happened between Yuri and me in Sochi had been sincere. Emotions are heightened during competition and it wasn’t unusual for a fellow skater to seek consolation in the arms of someone who who understood that. I’d succumbed to the temptation once or twice over the years, but it had never gone beyond the physical. Never progressed into a relationship. I certainly hadn’t thought about them during the plane ride home.

In addition to my confusion about Yuri Katsuki, I feared that I no longer felt the exhilaration I had when I’d first begun competing. I wasn't dissatisfied with my career, exactly—skating was all I knew—but I had developed a numbness toward it, a terrifying apathy, like a lover who has stayed too long in a cold bed.

The win at Sochi had changed nothing. The crowd was not excited by me anymore. _I_ was not excited by me anymore. Even the reporters had grown polite.

I had no idea what I could do to change it, no records left to break but my own. The Olympics weren’t for two more years. I didn't know if my body would hold out that long, though I had no doubts I would qualify for the team if I was in good condition. Yakov and I had not yet discussed my retirement, although it must have been on his mind, a skater of my age. I would be twenty-seven in a few days.

If I left the sport at the close of the season, would I come to hate it? Would jealousy turn me against the thing which had defined me for twenty years? Taking a season off was a viable option but a risky one. A skater who stops competing for that long can lose his edge. Some find it too hard to return to competition after time away, a struggle to regain one’s place, but the distance can provide perspective. It can also be a death knell.

* * *

I completed my season a champion, and though three months had passed since Sochi, my thoughts of him persisted. I didn’t need to look at his photographs anymore. I’d seen them so many times, I could’ve sketched his face from memory. Still, I thumbed through them when I was waiting on the coffee to brew or the ice to be resurfaced, or as I nursed a headache at the airport gate, which had been the case that morning. The photographs never failed to make me smile, especially the one taken out of focus, because he seemed to look me in the eye.

I’d hoped to see him at another competition, but I’d kept an eye on his progress following Sochi and knew that hope was in vain. The rumor in the skating community was that he and his coach had parted ways soon after the Grand Prix Final and he was to return shortly to Japan.

I did not allow myself to be thrilled by that news. Yuri’s decision regarding his coach had not been because of me, had nothing to do with me, though it once again put the idea in the forefront of my mind that I could be the one to mold a skater.

Chris and I had gotten marvelously smashed after the Worlds and I’d flown home to Russia that morning hungover. When Makkachin was a puppy, he would have wanted to take a long walk through the city as soon as I was home, but now that he was of a mature age, he was satisfied to lie with me on the couch while I recuperated. He slept between my legs with his head on my stomach.

Once he’d arrived home in Switzerland, Chris messaged to ask if I’d seen what was blowing up on social media. Had we been filmed doing something obscene last night that I’d have to explain away across a dozen interviews? It brought back the headache which had almost faded. Grimacing, I tapped the link Chris had sent to a video on YouTube.

Rather than a scandalous clip of me and Chris, the first thing I saw was Yuri’s name—and then my own. My heart stuttered at the juxtaposition.

Yuri stood at the center of an ice rink, his face rounder than I recalled. He’d put on quite a bit of weight. Behind his head in large block letters was painted the word “Hasetsu.” So he had returned to Japan, after all. This must’ve been his home rink.

Lifting his chin, Yuri spread his arms the way I have spread mine a hundred times, a thousand times! It was my program. I held my breath as he began to skate it, the only music that of his blades.

Any decent skater could have replicated the elements, but Yuri had copied the choreography exactly. Though he’d downgraded the quads, converting them to doubles, every nuance of my performance was present: the precise angle of his head, his facial expression a perfect mirror of one I had worn two days ago. And yet, there was something new in the space between Yuri’s fingers, vulnerability on his face which had not been present on mine.

I’d never seen myself so exactly through someone else’s eyes. How many times had he watched me skate?

He seemed unaware that the camera was on him, never once looking in its direction, as though its bearer had remained concealed. He moved in silence, but even without music, his performance sang.

I felt breathless. He could’ve picked any program to master. Why mine? Why that song? It was the most personal program I had ever designed, the most honest part of myself I’d dared reveal on the ice. Yuri couldn’t possibly know its origin—with everything that happened at the banquet, I’d forgotten to mention it.

I cringed at the clumsy way he landed a flip. Celestino was an accomplished coach, but he and Yuri were clearly mismatched. It was a shame he couldn’t train alongside me under Yakov, but I couldn’t imagine Yuri relocating to Russia. Perhaps if I flew to Japan to ask him personally. Yakov would take him as a student if I demanded it.

The comments below the video were infuriating. I don’t know what compelled me to read them in the first place; I know better. “I hope Victor never sees this,” said the first, and the presumption made me so angry (nevermind the hilarity of my brain mispronouncing the Latin spelling), I dressed in spite of my headache and took Makkachin for a run.

The older I get, the harder running becomes on my knees, but I don’t achieve the same clarity on a piece of gym equipment. We took the route across my favorite bridge, crowded with cars and pedestrians. I’d lived in that city all my life. People were used to seeing me train. They sometimes acknowledged me but generally left me be. I wondered if it would be the same in Japan.

It was a shame I couldn’t work with Yuri privately for a few weeks, to give him a helping of the confidence he lacked. He’d had skill enough to qualify for the Grand Prix series and Celestino had obviously thought it worth his time to work with him. Locked inside of Yuri was a gold medalist, if he wanted it badly enough.

What would he say if I came to Japan as he’d asked? Is that why he’d agreed to make the video, so I would see it? Because he had been thinking about me as well? I had no immediate commitments preventing me from travelling. My plan for the next month was to cement my choreography for the following season. I couldn’t choose between two variations of the same song and had decided to proceed with both. Time in Japan wouldn’t interfere with that. The ice I used for practice didn’t have to be Russian.

We reached Makkachin’s favorite park. He curled next to my legs as I sat on a bench to watch the video again. Yuri needed to work on landing his jumps. His left leg wobbled when he extended it, a sign of overexertion that could be overcome with more strength training, but even out of shape, he was less winded than most skaters would be after such a technically difficult program. Impressive.

I searched for more videos of him skating and discovered that he had quite a following online. I doubt he knew that. In all of the videos, I pinpointed areas for improvement, elements I would have him change: the position of his arm, the number of jumps in the first half of his program. He appeared to struggle to complete them, rather than deriving any satisfaction from the activity. That’s not how it should be.

The more I watched, the more jealous I grew of Yakov, of any coach who might extract greatness from him. If only I had experience! I should’ve agreed to assist at the summer camp last year. I had the knowledge to make Yuri a better skater but only from the vantage point of a contemporary, though perhaps he didn’t require a heavy hand, as a younger skater might. He’d been able to skate my program without any coach, after all.

I could devise a program for him, something to complement his strengths. I’d been coached for twenty years. I knew the rhetoric, and if the glass case containing my medals didn’t qualify me, what would? Surely I could manage it. How difficult could coaching be?

Makka and I continued through the park, and I was transported back three months to a hotel dance floor. I couldn’t stop smiling. Yuri had been thinking about me. I hadn’t felt this excited in a long time.

No one would expect me to retire at the height of my career. Imagine the shock wave it would create!

And there had been Sochi.

  
illustration by Ludicrouslyidiotic

* * *

I decided I would sleep on it.

To thank her for watching Makka, I invited Sasha out for an early meal; and to reward myself for another successful season, I went to a new boutique on upper Nevsky where I purchased a coat for the trip I had not yet decided to take. The store had beautifully packaged lip balm at the counter where I paid. I bought one as a treat and walked for a few hours. It was after seven. The sun would set soon.

Feeling nostalgic, I headed for a food market my mother had always liked and photographed the furry brown kiwis, crowns exploding from the tops of pomegranates. I bought two and ate them with yogurt for breakfast the next day, my phone beside me. I hadn’t looked at Yuri’s photographs in nearly twenty-four hours.

Out of curiosity, I checked flights to Japan and found a one-way trip that could have me there in fifteen hours. It was business class but preferable to economy, and better than the twenty-five hour itineraries offered by other airlines. And what luck! The Katsukis’ onsen had a website with a physical address, a manageable walk from the nearest train station. The international moving company my mother had used a few years ago was still in service; they’d had a last-minute cancellation and could fit me in immediately.

I took it as a sign.

After arranging to have my essential belongings shipped overnight, I booked the flight to Japan and gathered Makka’s records. I sent messages to my mother and a few close friends. Then came the hardest part, which was the phone call to Yakov.

He was exceedingly displeased, but after much grumbling and a semi-public disagreement, agreed to chauffeur us to the airport that evening. The fee was my endurance of his lecturing the entire ride. Didn’t I realize the enormous mistake I was making? What kind of coach could I be with no experience? Did I think this was going to be _easy_? I hugged him before I went through security.

* * *

Swallowing two glasses of champagne, I was content to pass the first leg to Moscow with my eyes closed. I was not asleep but took in the vibrations of the airplane, the murmuring of fellow passengers, how the plane reacted to the wind: dropping suddenly, and then rising slowly upward, as though the sky held us in its palm. Finding myself too excited to sleep during the transcontinental flight, I read a few fashion magazines I’d purchased at the airport. Due to his size, Makkachin had not been permitted in the cabin with me, but for my sake endured a total of twelve hours in three cargo holds and brief layovers in Moscow and Seoul.

When we finally arrived at Fukuoka airport, I’d been awake for a day and a half, and knowing I would see Yuri again soon, experienced something like euphoria. I retrieved my bags and Makka, and went through the hassle of animal import, which took far longer than I had expected. Poor Makkachin. I bought us both something to eat at the airport coffee shop and we took a scenic train ride along the coast.

I’d expected warm weather, since the island of Kyushu was farther south than St. Petersburg, but snow fell as we began the lengthy walk across the city to Yu-Topia Katsuki. Hasetsu sat along the ocean, as Yuri had said. The air smelled of salt, of the sea. Its brine invigorated me as we went along, infusing my hair and scarf. The streets were less congested than those in my hometown, winding through the city toward a castle marking its coast, which rose on a stone foundation from the surrounding landscape. Each level of the castle decreased in size, so it had the effect of a stack of hats. Between the spires and the red walkways, the slight flare at each corner of the roof, it was obvious that I was no longer in Russia.

I had no sense of what time it was, or even what day, only that I was beginning to expire. I’d made my plans so quickly I hadn’t thought beyond my arrival. Would there be room for me at their home, or would it be necessary to find accommodations at this hour? I shuddered at the idea of an unresearched hotel. A couch for the night would suffice, and there was the possibility that Yuri would allow me to stay with him. My god, what if he wasn’t even home?

A poster of him wearing an appealing black skating costume was the first thing I saw when I arrived at the hot spring, propped behind an advertisement for some type of food, which I couldn’t read. That didn’t stop my stomach from growling or my heart from doing a little flip at the sight of him.

I’m used to being recognized when I travel for competition, but I have never had anyone greet my dog with such a shocked expression as that worn by the middle-aged gentleman behind the counter when I approached it. He balked at Makkachin, who sat at my heel, and nearly laughed. Then, in embarrassment, he coughed into his fist and pounded his chest.

A sign on the counter indicated the staff understood English.

“He’s well trained,” I said, concerned that I might be asked to leave Makka outside, but it only made the man laugh again.

“Forgive me. My son had one just like him. We lost him recently. I thought I was seeing a ghost! I’m afraid he can’t accompany you into the baths, but you’re welcome to leave him here with me. Have you been to onsen before?”

“Once,” I said, feeling off balance. He’d mistaken me for a customer. “Is Yuri here?”

He scratched his neck and looked toward a doorway that must lead to the residence. “He hasn’t been down today. He’s tired. He’s been travelling, you see. He just came home.”

“I understand. You are his father?”

He nodded. “You look familiar. Are you a friend of his?”

I supposed I was. “Yes. I’m sure you’ve heard of me. My name is Viktor Nikiforov.”

His expression opened, becoming less formal and more friendly. “Yuri has talked about you often! His mother and I have rarely been able to travel with him when he competes, so I apologize we are just meeting for the first time.”

“The pleasure is mine. May I wait here for him?”

“I’ll ask my wife to check on him shortly,” said Yuri’s father. “Why don’t you relax in the meantime? There are indoor baths or the hot spring is outside. You’ll find bathing stations through that door. When Yuri comes down, I’ll send him out to you.”

“Thank you. Is it all right if I leave my bags with you as well? I didn’t arrange for a hotel.”

“If you are a friend of Yuri’s, you will stay with us.”

“Excellent. Oh—I’m having a few things delivered. I hope that’s okay, but this was the only address I knew in Hasetsu.” I patted Makkachin on the head. “Stay here.”

I was happy to shed my traveling clothes. I left them in a pile and washed myself, and went naked out to the bath. The water was blue, the pool surrounded by a tall bamboo fence and at its center stood a fountain in the shape of a frog, like something out of a fairy tale! Though steam curled from the surface, the water wasn’t as hot as I’d expected. There were no other bathers, so I reserved my few phrases of Japanese and settled in up to my chest.

The sun had almost finished setting—or had it just begun to rise? I felt out of time. I was too tired to safely bathe alone; a few seconds in the heat and I was already drowsy, but it relieved the stiffness in my back from sitting so long on an airplane and returned warmth to my fingertips. Snow continued to fall. It melted on contact with my skin, like tiny fingers prodding me awake.

I didn’t have to wait long for him to appear. There was a great commotion inside, the wet slap of running feet. My heart beat in time with it! The exterior doors burst open and Yuri Katsuki gaped at me through the falling snow.

“Viktor? What are you doing here?”

Heartbreak has always been the inability to perform at my best, when I let myself down. I didn't expect it in the form of two shocked eyes behind a fogged pair of glasses. When Yuri addressed me, you would have thought it was the first time we had spoken.

Maybe he thought I’d come for relaxation, so to avoid any confusion, I stood and declared my intention to be his coach.

No reaction.

I couldn't tell if he was surprised or angry, or if he typically responded to excitement by becoming tongue-tied. He continued to stare at me.

“You’re going to get to the Grand Prix Final,” I added, in case it wasn’t clear what I was offering. “And you’re going to win.”

He opened his mouth several times and looked nauseated by the idea.

“Won’t you join me?” I said, motioning to the water.

He put his hands to his clothes and wordlessly pointed to the shower room.

“You’re going to shower first? Okay, no problem. I’ll wait for you.”

He blinked a handful of times and turned on his heel. A few minutes later, he came back with a small towel held modestly in front of his rounded stomach. He was careful not to allow the cloth to touch the water, taking it away only at the last instant, but it was enough time for me to see the softness that months of rest and food had created in his body. He was not in the condition a skater ought to be. Though he was lovely, that was the first thing we would have to change.

He didn't look at me until he was up to his shoulders in the water, and then he stayed the whole width of the pool away from me, flinching every time I moved a finger. When I attempted to meet his eyes, he looked down or just past mine.

“Are you happy to be home?” I asked, sweeping a palmful of the gorgeous bath water over my arms.

Yuri nodded tightly. “Yes. Thank you.”

“I can see why you wanted to come back. Your family must be glad to have you.”

“They are, thank you very much.”

I didn’t usually have this much difficulty extracting conversation from people. Was he embarrassed by his appearance? Was he not interested in me any longer?

He looked toward the interior doors with longing and my smile faltered. There was a terrible sinking feeling in my stomach, like the airplane falling, and for the first time since I’d boarded the plane in St. Petersburg, I asked myself, had I made a mistake by coming here?

But he’d asked me to come! I had a banquet hall of witnesses who could swear my presence here was his doing. And on top of that had been the YouTube video, the way he’d made my program his own—a sort of love letter, like the sweet way he’d asked me to stay with him from his hotel bed.

No. It was shock that had caused his silence. It had to be. He was embarrassed by his behavior toward me in December. He never believed I would actually come. Well, good. I always like to surprise my audience.

* * *

After a few hours of sleep on the floor, my mind was clearer, even if my shoulder felt like it had been crushed, and it became apparent how much work we had in front of us before I could even begin to think of training him.

I had trouble remembering specific details of the night before. I recalled getting out of the bath and Yuri handing me a robe, then blushing and looking away. He’d brought me something to eat, and brought bowls of food and water for Makkachin. They must have belonged to his own dog. Makkachin had liked him immediately. He’d let Yuri scratch between his ears while he ate and licked his hand afterwards, tail thumping happily against the floor.

Yuri and I hadn’t spoken further. He’d watched me eat and petted the dog, and when I began to yawn he’d offered me a pillow and knelt beside me on the floor. I didn't care where we were sitting or who might be watching; it was a relief to close my eyes.

He was in the same position when I returned to the world, talking quietly to someone who by comparison was shouting. They spoke too rapidly for me to make out any words besides my own name, but I could guess what they were talking about. The news had undoubtedly spread that I had left Russia. Yakov had not been pleased with me, and he has never been good at censoring himself with reporters. I had told a few close friends, but they wouldn’t have said anything. There hadn’t been time to stop by my home rink before I left to say goodbye. My departure had likely gone viral by now. Chris would message me at any moment.

Makkachin snuffled wetly in my ear. I hugged him to me and sat up.

Yuri’s cheeks were full and pink. He’d stayed by my side, watching over Makkachin and me as we slept, though we had yet to say a proper hello.

“I’m starving,” I said. I’d eaten only broth before I fell asleep. It had hardly been substantial.

Yuri perked up at the mention of food, the first positive reaction since my arrival, so I decided to use it as common ground and asked for a dish of his favorite, which his mother proudly presented.

Katsudon, the dish pictured on the advertisement I couldn’t read, is delicious. Not only flavorful but filling! With one bite, I understood why Yuri enjoyed it so much. I would not suffer living with him in Japan.

“I’m glad you like it,” Yuri said when I expressed my pleasure, his cheeks flushed as beautifully as they had been that night from the champagne.

“Yuri gains weight easily,” said his companion, an older woman called Minako—a ballet dancer, if I understood correctly, and a long-time friend. “So he was only allowed to eat it when he won a competition.”

“Oh?” I said, licking the ambrosial sauce from my lips. “Have you eaten it recently?”

“Yes, yes,” Yuri said. “I eat it often.”

It was as I’d suspected. Some athletes are able to eat whatever they want and it doesn't affect them, but for most of us, sacrifice is necessary, like Mikhael said. I can't drink as much as I like and maintain my physique, and Yuri has to watch how many calories he consumes.

One day we’ll both be retired and it won’t matter. I will be bald and wear hats like Yakov, and Yuri will eat all the pork cutlet bowls he desires. It’s bliss, to think of a future with him!

But on that day, I knew if he continued in this manner, there was no way for me to improve his technique. That meant no more fried meats, no more egg yolk. It would have to be steamed vegetables and rice for now.

“In your condition, lessons would be meaningless,” I said, taking no pleasure from my words. I smiled to soften them. “You need to get back to your weight from the Grand Prix Final or I cannot help you. So until then, no more katsudon for my little piglet. Okay?”

I had intended it as an affectionate reference to the pork, but Minako gave me a funny look.

Thankfully, Yuri’s sister interrupted to say that the boxes containing my belongings had arrived from Russia, so I asked Yuri to deliver them to the room where I’d be staying. There was no reason we shouldn’t start his workout immediately, and I wanted him to myself. He carried the lighter boxes two at a time. After his third trip, I decided that I would help, and together we stacked them floor to ceiling in columns. There was hardly any floor space left for me to sleep.

“I’m sorry it’s so small,” Yuri panted from his crouched position on the floor where he’d deposited the final box. “We only had an unused banquet room available.”

He avoided looking me in the eye. I regretted what I’d said to him downstairs about his weight. I should have been more delicate. I tend to say the wrong thing when people around me are upset, and I demonstrated that now by bringing up my coaching fee.

“You can pay me when you win,” I added, hoping it came across as humorous.

“Thank you,” Yuri said instead of laughing.

Makkachin pawed at the unfamiliar woven floor covering and Yuri didn't get up. His parents were downstairs, so I took advantage of our precious time alone and knelt down beside him. As soon as I touched his hand, he tensed, like he could hardly stand it. Was he seeing someone? Did he not know how to tell me? Perhaps he was simply being coy.

He didn't respond when I asked about a lover but backed into the hallway.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He gave me a bewildered look, as though I should know that answer for myself, but the longer we locked eyes, the more confused I became.

Eventually he said, “I’m going to see if my parents need help,” and went downstairs.

* * *

I spent an hour unpacking, waiting for him to come back up, but I suspected he was waiting for me to go to sleep. Rather than play his game of chicken, I went downstairs to find him. The onsen had closed for the night and his parents must have gone up to bed. Yuri stood in the dark folding towels.

“Viktor!” He pushed his glasses further up his nose—likely a nervous habit, for they had not slipped. “Do you need something?”

“Your company.” I took the towel from his hands.

“I promised my mother that I would fold these before I go to sleep.”

“It will go twice as fast if we both work.”

His eyebrows knit together, but he let out a little sigh and thrust a towel into my hands. “Like this,” he demonstrated. “We fold them all the same way.”

My first attempt was wrong. He shook his head and took the towel back, careful not to touch my fingers. He kept his eyes down, never meeting mine, though they flicked up occasionally as he worked. A shake of the towel, three folds, and he laid it on the pile. It looked simple enough.

“Give me another,” I said and held out a hand.

My second attempt was better. The corners didn't line up perfectly, but he didn't re-fold it, merely tossed it on top of the rest.

“Who does your laundry?” he asked neutrally.

“I send it out,” I said, a bit defensive. “Are you criticizing my technique?”

He pursed his mouth. “This is one place where I can beat you.”

“It’s not the _only_ place,” I said, laughing, and again I was met by a look of bewilderment, as though we had never met, as though the banquet hadn’t happened. I laid my hand on his. “I wish you could’ve joined me and Chris for breakfast in Sochi.”

He blinked and pulled his hand away. “Christophe Giacometti?”

“You had already checked out when we knocked on your door.”

His eyes grew wide and round and began to shine. “I—I’m sorry I missed it.”

“It’s okay. I’m here now. How many more towels do we have?”

Yuri bit his lip and motioned with his head to an intimidating pile in the basket behind him.

“I find it relaxing,” he said sheepishly and handed me another. I focused on aligning the corners. If I could land a quadruple flip, I could fold a towel!

It came out crooked. I started over.

“You’ve done this all your life?” I asked, watching his quick, precise work. “Worked for your family?”

He nodded. “Though I’ve been away.”

“For five years, correct?”

He stilled, his eyes darting back and forth, doubtless wondering how I remembered that detail from so many months ago. I wondered that myself, seeing as I’ve always had a poor short-term memory.

“I trained in America,” he said.

“And you went to college there, yes? What did you study?”

“Business,” he said. “I’ll run this place one day when my parents retire. I thought it would be a good foundation.”

I hadn’t attended university; I’d had tutors instead. My education had been adequate but I envied his worldly experience. “Did you enjoy it?” I asked.

“I graduated with honors.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Do you enjoy everything you do well?” Yuri said, glancing to me.

“What is the point otherwise?” I folded the next towel almost as well as he did and handed it back with a smirk.

“If you truly enjoy folding laundry, you will quickly become my mother’s favorite.”

“Then I will endeavor to be an expert.”

Behind his glasses, Yuri blinked like an owl. My heart, in turn, fluttered like the snowflakes outside. We folded the rest of the basket and went upstairs together. He stopped me outside of my room with a touch to my sleeve, all too brief, long enough only to stall my movement.

“Goodnight, Viktor.”

Makkachin was curled up asleep on the floor mat that would serve as my bed until I could install a proper one. “Would you like to come in?” I asked. “We can talk more. I’d like to get to know you better.”

“Thank you but I’m very tired.” His eyes told another story, lingering on the pillow where Makkachin lay. “We can talk tomorrow.”

I gave him my most inviting smile and dipped my head. “Not even for a few minutes?”

Rather than step through the door, he looked almost ready to fight or to cry, a slight tremor in his lower lip and his arms held rigidly at his sides. “I have to be up early to help my parents before I train.”

“Of course.”

He continued to the door at the end of the hallway and went through it so quickly, I hardly saw inside. Ambient moonlight from the hallway windows outlined the edge of a bed before he shut the door so firmly, the boxes around me shuddered.

If he would not come to me, I would go to him. His floor had to be as comfortable as mine and less lonely. To Makkachin’s dismay, I stole my pillow and blanket, and with renewed determination, knocked on Yuri’s door.

“Yuri? Let’s sleep together!”

From the other side of the door came a flurry of paper. “No!” Yuri cried and shoved his weight against it to keep me out.

I don't purport to be an expert in Japanese culture, but I deduced that I must have overstepped. We are friendly with one another in Russia. It wouldn’t be so strange to stay over with a close friend, but maybe it wasn't so here. And it had been months for him as well. We were both tired.

That knowledge did not stop the poisonous voice in my head as I scrolled through the few photographs of us in the dark. _You should never have come here_ , it whispered. _He doesn’t want you_.

But I couldn’t go home. If I did, my affection for him would be reduced to a joke. “ _Did you hear about Viktor, humiliated by that Japanese skater!_ ” What would Yakov say if I came back so soon? My rink mates? My fans? I had to stay in Hasetsu for the time being, even if it meant staying only as his coach. That was the primary reason I had come, after all. The other thing … it was something I would have to learn to control.

 _How is Japan?_ Chris wrote, accompanied by a suggestively winking emoji. I put my phone to charge without writing back and turned away from it.

I don't cry, but as I lay unsleeping on a thin mat on the floor, cold beneath a single blanket that didn’t cover my feet and Makka warm against my chest, my eyes were wet.


	4. Chapter 4

I reacted to Yuri’s rejection with hostility and admit that for the first few days after he’d refused me, I was draconian with him. But if all I would have to show for my time in Japan was Yuri as my student, I would be the finest coach he’d ever have.

I treated him as Yakov had always treated me. It was terrible to see him struggle through a workout and not be able to offer a kind word, to invite him onto the ice with me, to put an arm around his shoulders or bring him a bowl of the food he craved so badly, but it was also satisfying. My mother says I’m vindictive. I struggle against that part of myself, a sadistic self-preservation. In vengeance of my jealousy, that part of me freely ate katsudon in front of him, refused him access to the ice, and provided me with hours of solitude. It reassured me that while I fell asleep on the floor each night with a dog in my arms, barred from entry to his room, he was alone.

He spent his days running and conditioning, or at his friend’s ballet studio. I purchased a bed, a sofa, a lamp and set up my room the way I liked. When I wasn’t skating, I introduced myself to the residents of Hasetsu, who confided that the city had been reinvigorated by my presence. At least I had affected something! To repay them, I frequently mentioned my fondness for the town on Instagram and ate my way across the city. I told Yuri if he would not prove his dedication to winning gold, I would leave.

I'm not sure whether or not he could tell I was bluffing.

* * *

His behavior toward me changed the morning Yuri Plisetsky arrived unexpectedly in Japan.

It was the first day I was to train my Yuri, who after two weeks had finally worked off the weight I’d instructed, and I was wracked with nerves waiting for him to arrive at the Ice Castle. I had no excuse to refuse him access to the ice any longer, but surely we would grow closer once we began to work together?

There had been pandemonium outside that morning, reporters who’d discovered I was in Japan lying in wait for a sound byte. I’d winked at them and gone inside without providing one. They must have remained, because as I was working on the choreography for the short program I would have used that coming season, there was a great uproar of voices heralding Yuri’s arrival.

I needed a moment before I could face him and lost myself in the routine, my blades making love to the ice. No matter what was going on around me, ice was where I felt at peace, the only place in the world where no one could disturb me.

And then a familiar voice shouted, “Hey, _Viktor_!”

 _Almost_ no one. I came to a full stop.

Allow me a moment to talk about Yuri Plisetsky. He was one of the finest skaters I had ever met, bursting with potential, but his angelic beauty was tempered by anger too great for someone just fifteen. I didn’t know much about his home life; Yakov said he lived with his grandfather and his mother had once been an accomplished skater herself. She lived further east.

I was shocked he’d tracked me down in Japan. It would have been strange behavior for an adult, but for a child it was incomprehensible, not to mention he was usually acerbic toward me. I would not have called him a friend back then. Worried something had happened to prompt his trip, I skated over to where he and Yuri stood.

“Yuri! What are you doing here?”

Yurio’s face became stormy.

“You promised to make me a winning program for my senior debut, and then I hear you’d fucked off to Japan to train this pig!” he spat in Russian. “Do you train everyone who takes their clothes off for you?”

“Please speak English in front of Yuri,” I said pleasantly, smiling although my heart slammed in my chest at his accusation and I wanted to slap him for what he’d just said. Though he hadn’t understood a word of it, my Yuri colored along his cheeks and shuffled his feet closer together.

Yurio recounted a meeting I had a faint memory of. I had apparently promised to choreograph his senior debut if he could win the junior championship without quads. “I want the program you promised me,” Yurio said.

The precocious Nishigori triplets (young daughters of Yuri’s childhood friends) had emerged from the rink’s office, no doubt having overheard Yurio’s outburst, so it was necessary to keep the atmosphere pleasant. I wasn’t sure if I believed Yurio’s claim that he’d come all this way simply because of a program, but at least with him here, I could keep a watchful eye on him.

“Ah—sorry, sorry.” I laughed and rubbed my neck to give myself a few moments to think. “You knew I was the forgetful type, didn’t you?”

There’s an expression: _if looks could kill_. Well, if they _could_ , Yurio wouldn’t kill anyone. Too easy. He’d maim them so they’d have to live with the scars, and I would have a face like a beast.

At the triplets’ urging, we agreed that I would design a program for each of the Yuris using the music I’d had written for my now-defunct upcoming season, and they would compete against each other in one week’s time for the right to claim me. I had no intention of going home, but I’d hoped the competition would provide my Yuri the motivation he needed.

Since Yurio was exhausted from his flight and subsequent trek across the city, I ordered him to keep off the ice for the day. He made a rude gesture in response but slumped onto his suitcase, chin in his hands.

“You just want to see me humiliated again,” he muttered.

“English!” I reminded him and beckoned Yuri onto the ice. He stopped too far away for my liking, close enough for me to speak to him and him alone. I tried to pretend Yurio wasn’t watching.

“I’m going to ask you to skate for me, Yuri. I need to study the way you move so I can design something appropriate. Do you understand?”

Yuri gave a determined nod.

“Good.” I smiled without meaning to. “Why don’t we start with your long program from last year?”

* * *

My neighbor Sasha is an artist. She doesn’t like people to see her rough sketches, places where she has revised anatomy or changed an element in the background, only the final paintings—the culmination of her work, which, if she has been successful, appears effortless to the viewer. At this point in his career, Yuri was locked in perpetual sketch mode.

But with Yurio around, he behaved less formally in my presence than usual, as if he feared I would actually return to Russia because a child had demanded it! He walked in step with me back to the house after practice. Whenever our hands brushed by accident, my heart leapt. Yurio trailed his suitcase behind us, cursing under his breath in Russian.

At home, Yuri changed clothes and found me in my room entertaining an irate Yurio. Yurio was placated by the promise of a private bath and the adjacent storage closet as a makeshift guest room. He shut himself in it, affording Yuri and me precious minutes alone.

I was sitting on my couch; he stood a few feet away.

“I could stay with you while he’s here,” I said, taking a chance on his positive shift in behavior. “He could take my room.”

“He’s not staying long,” Yuri said without turning around.

“Right.” I swallowed my disappointment. Yurio wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for me; perhaps Yuri was upset about that. Perhaps his _family_ was upset. “I didn’t know he was going to follow me,” I said, concerned I had offended them all.

Yuri only hummed and examined my bookshelf. “You like to read?”

“In the evenings, sometimes. I’m usually too tired and fall asleep holding them. I thought I might have more time while I’m here, so I had them shipped.”

“That must have cost a fortune!”

“It’s only money.” I stood up and went to his side. He was studying the framed portrait of me, taken when I’d first cut off my hair. I recalled his boast of a dozen posters and leaned over his shoulder. “Did you have this one on your wall?”

He jerked his head around so quickly, our foreheads collided. He rubbed his head and apologized for his clumsiness. “Please bring him down when he’s ready to eat,” he said and left me.

* * *

I assumed Yuri would avoid me for the rest of the evening, so I was delighted when he sat adjacent to me at dinner without me having to ask! His meal was an unappealing plate of steamed broccoli and noodles, the same thing he’d eaten for weeks. I dug into my katsudon without apology. Yuri’s mother had brought a bowl for Yurio as well. He ate with the messy enthusiasm Makka had had as a puppy and didn’t speak once.

I don’t think of myself as superstitious, but since I was seated between two Yuris, I sent up a wish that mine would fully warm to me. He looked at the mess Yurio had made of the dining table and then grinned at me from behind his hand, eyes crinkled in silent laughter. I hoped it had been granted.

But then Mari, his older sister who quite terrified me, collected him to help clear out the storage room for Yurio’s stay (and bestowed upon him the excellent nickname). That left me and Yurio alone with Yuri’s mother in the sparse dining room. She excused herself not long after, and since it would no longer be impolite, I reverted to Russian.

“Are you all right, Yuri?” I asked, stretching out my legs. I was not yet used to sitting on the floor.

He looked young wrapped in one of the onsen’s robes, rather than a hooded sweatshirt. “Huh?”

“I want to know what you’re really doing here.”

Yurio slammed his fist on the table. “Is your memory honestly that terrible in your decrepit age, old man? I told you, I came for the program you promised me.”

“You could’ve called me. You didn’t have to cross a continent.”

“You’ve never given me your number.”

“Yet you somehow thought it would be easier to get on an airplane and fly to Japan to search for me. How did you even purchase a ticket?”

“You’re not the only successful person in Russia!”

“You’re fifteen,” I said.

He sighed. “I bought it online, okay?”

I tried a different approach. “Does your family know you’re here?”

Behind his veil of hair, his face darkened. “What are you, my _dad_?”

“You need to let them know you’re in Japan. They could be worried.”

“I will! Now shut up and let me eat!”

There was no point in arguing with him further. I’d been stubborn at that age too, insisting on tackling jumps I shouldn’t have tried with a developing body, on costumes Yakov considered scandalous. Yurio plucked every last grain of rice from his bowl; at least I was assured he was well fed. I would call Yakov about him tomorrow if I needed to.

Sighing, I took a few moments to study our surroundings. The room contained a dining table and a large flat-screen TV. In front of it stood a set of nesting dolls. I hadn’t taken notice of them at first, since I own a set myself, but it occurred to me they wouldn’t be common here. Were they Yuri’s? Might he have bought them because of me, because of my heritage? I smiled against the back of my hand, eager for his return.

Mari rejoined us not long after, but Yuri wasn’t with her.

“He left a while ago,” she said and my heart sunk. “At this hour, he’d be at Minako’s place or the Ice Castle.”

It took a moment for me to recognize the name. “Minako?” I said, recalling the woman I’d met my first day here. “The ballet teacher?”

Come to think of it, Yuri had mentioned seeing her quite often. I knew she’d been helping him get back into shape, but it was too late for practice. Even Lilia hadn’t drilled me at this hour.

“They’ve been friends for years,” Mari said. “He’s there a lot. Are you done, Yurio? I’ll take your bowl.”

I felt like my insides had been forcibly taken out. No wonder Yuri had avoided the question about a lover, had refused my advances. His relationship with Minako explained everything—his distance, his silence, but why would he let me find out about her this way? I hadn’t thought him capable of such cruelty. My guess was she didn’t know what had happened in December at the banquet, and he didn’t want her to. I really was here just to coach him. It was the final blow to my self-esteem.

“You’re wasting your time chasing after that pig,” Yurio muttered in Russian.

I hid my fist beneath the table. Yurio would be fine for the night with Yuri’s family and he’d likely sleep soon anyway. I had to get out for a while.

“I’m taking Makka for a walk,” I said breezily in English and went up to dress.

* * *

I hadn’t gone out with the intent of confronting them but rather to cloak my bruised pride in moonlight. What kind of idiot makes a life change overnight the way I had? A child, that’s who. I should’ve gotten Yuri’s number in December. I should have _asked_ if he still wanted my help.

Makka and I walked away from the castle down the main street, the one that would eventually lead us to the neighboring town if we went far enough. I stopped at the center of the bridge and folded my arms on the metal railing. A few meters away, an old man cast his fishing lure into the ocean. I acknowledged him and he greeted me by name.

With his tail, Makka whacked the back of my calves. I envied his perpetually cheerful disposition. His concerns were few: what could he eat, where could he sleep, was there something fast to chase? He sat contentedly beside me, ignorant of the crushing disappointment in my chest.

We remained longer than the fisherman, who eventually laid his catch in a small cooler and wished me a good evening. It had been a while since I’d spoken to my mother; I supposed I ought to call her. She lived in the Netherlands now and our schedules usually conflicted. I would’ve appreciated her opinion tonight. She would likely tell me to see through what I’d started, to be compassionate toward Yuri. We’d made no promises to one another, after all. If I cared about him, I should be glad for his happiness even at the expense of mine. But in my haste to leave the Katsukis’ home, I’d forgotten my phone.

We took an indirect route back to the hot spring. Much of the city had closed for the night, but the light was on in Minako’s snack bar. I heard my mother’s voice again, “ _Do not make assumptions_ ,” and went in anyway.

Minako was alone behind the bar when Makka and I entered. She straightened her posture and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear.

“This is an honor. What can I get you?”

“I don’t care,” I said, sitting down. Makka lay at my feet. “I usually prefer whisky.”

“I would have guessed vodka.” I snorted quietly at the assumption. She motioned to a brown bottle already on the counter. “Will you settle for Nihonshu?”

“That’s fine.”

She poured us both a glass. It was clear as water. “How are you enjoying Japan?”

I shrugged and drank the liquor room temperature. It burned on the way down. I didn’t care for the sour taste—like the cheap vodka we used to buy as teenagers—but it was better than nothing.

“You should see more of the country while you’re here,” Minako said. “Hasetsu has declined in the last few years. You wouldn’t know it, but there used to be quite a tourist trade. Your arrival is the most exciting thing to happen in months. Before that, it was Yuri coming home.”

“Is he here?” I asked flatly. She scowled.

“Yuri? No. Why would he be here?”

I raised an eyebrow. “His sister said that he was probably at your place.”

After a moment of stunned silence, she laughed into her hand.

“By ‘my place,’ she meant my ballet studio.” She refilled her glass and took a drink. “When Yuri gets anxious, he wants to practice. I usually go along with him. Ice Castle lets him skate any time if it’s not booked. He’s no prodigy, but he was blessed with more time to practice than anyone else. Another?”

Feeling a bit more cheerful now that I knew Yuri was not in someone else’s bed, I slipped off my coat. “Why not?”

* * *

For an hour, Minako told me about her career as a professional dancer. She’d spent her twenties traveling the world as I had, eventually settling down in her hometown to teach.

“And Yuri was a student of yours?” I asked, resting my chin in my hand.

She nodded fondly. “He barely came up to my waist then! He’s like a younger brother. I went to school with his parents. Actually, working with Yuri when he was growing up helped me to readjust to life here. It was a shock when I first came home.”

“I can imagine.”

“I’d lived in New York for a few years and before that San Francisco. You know, I was surprised when Yuri left for America. It’s so unlike him; he’s spent his whole life here. That’s why I know how determined he was to do well.”

She held up the bottle again. I deferred her offer of a fourth refill to another visit and gathered my things.

“What do I owe you?” I asked.

“This was on me. Thanks for doing this for him.” She leaned slightly over the bar, reddened lips curving into a familiar shape. More quietly, she added, “If you want someone to show you around while you’re here, you know where I live.”

Minako was an attractive older woman, but her flirtations were wasted on me. Not wanting to lead her on further, I stood and buttoned my coat.

“I appreciate that. Thanks for the drink.”

Makka and I went out. The _sake_ had warmed me, a comforting fire in the pit of my stomach. It burned all the way to the Ice Castle, giving me the courage to push open the doors.

Inside was quiet, save for the dazzling strike of steel blades on ice. I composed myself and went in.

He skated alone. His shirt was soaked through at the neck, his hair flat, face red from exertion but furious with determination. Yuko, who had grown up with Yuri and managed the facility, noticed me standing in the entrance and waved me inside the office with her and her husband. Their triplets must have been home sleeping. We watched Yuri skate from behind glass.

“He’s always come here to practice by himself,” Takeshi said. He spoke with remarkable tenderness for someone so intimidating in size. I had no doubt he could throw me across the room if he wanted.

Yuko, a petite and pretty woman about my age, leaned against the counter. “Yuri’s always loved skating. He didn’t even play with his friends.”

“To be fair,” Takeshi said, “he’s never been very good at making them. He’s not good at putting himself out there. I don’t want this to be the end for him.”

“He’s actually a sore loser,” Yuko confided to me. “I hope you can bring out a new side of him.”

I knew of one foolproof method, but he couldn’t skate if he was intoxicated. I needed a spell to turn him into a prince, like the frog in the center of his fountain. Chuckling, I thanked them for their insight and saw myself out.

I doubted that Yuri realized I’d been there, so lost in the music within his head. I respected his desire to be alone and didn’t wait for him outside, though I sat up until he returned to the house. Yurio was already sleeping, the connecting door between our rooms shut. He snored.

I read until I heard footsteps and met Yuri in the hallway outside his room.

“I missed you earlier,” I said. “You didn’t say goodbye.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you’d miss me.”

I touched his arm, trailing my hand to the edge of his sleeve, fingertips hovering just above his wrist.

“You underestimate yourself,” I said. “I’ll see you at breakfast.”

My reward was the slow creeping blush on his cheeks, on the tips of his ears, the way he dipped his head and took in the sight of my hand on his arm.

“Okay,” he said.

  
illustration by Ludicrouslyidiotic


	5. Chapter 5

That night, I locked myself up in my room with Makka and, lying on the bed with my eyes closed, alternately played the two compositions I’d commissioned for my upcoming season: _In Regards to Love: Eros_ and _Agape._

I would’ve won with either. No one would have expected me to skate to the theme of unconditional love, though following a season in which my theme had been longing, they might not have expected raw sexuality either. Holding onto the music for a year was an option, although by then I might have found inspiration elsewhere. Better to bestow it upon the two Yuris, but how to assign the themes?

Yurio would wish for _eros_ , of this I had no doubt, and it would be provocative for someone of his age. But Yuri! Yuri, sensuality veiled in innocence, uncertain of his own beauty, would make it sing.

I wanted to see him move the way he’d moved for me in December, for those movements to be my design. I would have this part of him.

* * *

As I’d expected, Yurio was furious about his assignment and Yuri terrified. He blanched when I first played the music for him. I explained that unless they were both active in reshaping their images, doing the opposite of what people would expect, they would always be seen as mediocre.

After the music had finished playing, they made their demands, what they each wanted from me if they won.

Yurio’s was no surprise: my immediate return to Russia. He would have me as his own coach.

“Sure,” I said, feeling like a scrap of food being pulled between two dogs, and turned to Yuri. Considering his terms in Sochi, I expected no less than the same, but no one has ever surprised me as much as he has.

“I want to eat with you,” he said, pulling up into his shoulders. “Katsudon. I want to keep winning and keep eating katsudon, so I’ll skate to _eros_!”

It was a strange proposal, but I smiled so broadly, it hurt. It would’ve taken a legion to get me back on a plane to Russia after that.

I demonstrated the choreography I had in mind for him. Yuri’s mouth was open as he watched me, his skin flushed. Our attraction was not one-sided. I skated to him.

“What quads can you land?” I asked.

“The toe loop. I can land the Salchow in practice but never in competition. I think I can do it if I try!”

There wasn’t time for me to teach him something new, not in a week. “You can practice the basics today. I’ll work with Yurio first.”

He looked disappointed but didn’t argue.

“How many times have you messed up during competition?” I asked. “You have the skill to win. Why can’t you make it happen?”

“Probably … because I lack confidence.”

“So my job is to make you feel confident in yourself.”

I took courage from his reaction to me in the hallway last night, from his proposal that we should eat together indefinitely, from his reaction to me now. I glided the short distance between us, so my skate was between both of his, and bent my face close to his, close enough to kiss.

“No one in the whole world knows your true _eros_ , Yuri,” I told him quietly, leaning into him. Our mouths were not an inch apart; we had danced like this not long ago. I caressed his lip, hoping to tease out that side of him. “It may be an alluring part of you that you yourself are unaware of. Will you show it to me soon?”

Yuri’s lip trembled beneath my thumb. I longed to kiss the blush from his cheeks.

“Hey, Viktor, aren’t you teaching me first?” Yurio shouted. “You can make an ass of yourself later.”

I sent my Yuri to train with the instruction to think about what _eros_ meant to him.

* * *

Yuri Plisetsky is a frustrating and glorious student–obstinate, but willing to do anything to win. More driven than I had ever been. After a morning spent teaching him the components of the program I’d designed, I ordered him to a temple, hoping the serenity would inspire his _agape_. At the very least, it would spare me his complaints for a few hours. With time to myself, I worked on my own routines until Yuri had finished training with Takeshi.

He waited for me at the edge of the ice. His hair was wet and clean; he must’ve showered. He’d zipped his black coat to the top, so it concealed his neck.

“Viktor, may I speak with you?”

I left the ice, using the boards to balance as I put on my skate guards. “You can always talk to me, Yuri.”

“I don’t mean to question you, but are you certain this is the right program for me? _Eros_ , I mean.”

“You didn’t like it?”.

“No, no, I did! I liked it when you skated it.”

I smiled. “And I will like it when you skate it.”

He opened his mouth. I closed it with a fingertip before he could speak.

“You’re going to work hard for me tomorrow, aren’t you? I’m looking forward to teaching you the choreography.”

Yuri frowned. “I thought you said I was mediocre.”

“You won’t be when I’m through with you. What do you hear in it? In the music?”

“You’ll laugh,” Yuri mumbled and looked away.

“Maybe. Tell me anyway.”

He took a breath. “I hear the story of a man who charms the most beautiful woman in town and once he’s won her favor, leaves.”

I don’t think my heart beat for a few seconds. It was the closest Yuri had ever come to acknowledging what had happened between us in December. I waited for him to say something else—to apologize, maybe—but he only licked his lips.

“What if I can’t defeat him?” he said. “I don’t know how to charm anyone!”

“We both know that isn’t true.”

He blinked. “Huh?”

“Anyway, you shouldn’t be thinking about him. When you perform, imagine I am the only person watching you. I am the only person you have to impress. You are the man in your story, do you understand?”

“I–”

“You must focus on yourself, yes? On what _eros_ means to you.” With my thumb, I touched his lip again. “What is it that you desire, Yuri?”

The strain of the day had rendered him near his breaking point. His mouth opened wordlessly, and again, I closed it.

“Have lunch with me,” I said, stepping away. “There is a seafood restaurant that I’ve been meaning to try. Do you enjoy squid?”

“What about Yurio?”

“Don’t worry about Yurio. I’m going to wash up and then we can leave. Wait for me.”

* * *

The restaurant was situated close to the water along the harbor, a good distance from the town center. I walked the bicycle between us. Yuri was quiet, keeping his head down as we went along. In fact, the first thing he said to me outside of the Ice Castle was that he’d forgotten his wallet.

“It must be in my room. I was so excited this morning I forgot it,” he said, patting down his jacket once we’d been seated near the window. I hadn’t thought to make a reservation, but since it was early, we got in without a wait. Yuri stood abruptly. “I’ll run home and get it! May I take your bicycle?”

I shook out a napkin and laid it on my lap. “I asked you to lunch. This is on me.”

Yuri slumped back down onto the floor. “I owe you so much already.”

“I told you not to worry about that. Right now, I simply want to enjoy your company.”

“I feel underdressed.” He twisted his fingers into his collar.

“You look stunning with your hair pushed back. You ought to wear it this way more often. Anyway, no one can see you through the partition.” I opened the menu. “Oh, excellent, they have beer! What are you having? I think I’m going to have one of the lunch specials; I’m starving. If I order the assorted sashimi, will you eat some?”

He made a little choking noise instead of answering but ate half the platter and his entire meal. I used that time to tell him more about myself.

“So there have been a _few_ romances here and there,” I said, gesturing with my second beer, “but with all of the travelling and the hours I spend training, something long-term hasn’t been possible. What about you?”

He ducked behind a napkin to wipe his mouth. “What about me?”

“Has your experience with love been the same?”

“Oh, I haven’t … I’ve never been in a relationship.”

Surprised, I took an overly large sip and swallowed with effort. “Really?”

He shook his head.

“Surely you’ve had feelings for someone.”

“Yuko, maybe, when we were kids. All I’ve ever thought about was skating, wanting to be like ...” He censored himself and looked out the window, the flush in his neck and ears supplying the final word.

Biting back my pleasure, I raised my hand for the check.

* * *

Yuri went upstairs to rest for a few hours before dinner, and since Yurio hadn’t come back from the temple, I returned emails and took care of business at home. My composer had asked if I had any changes to the tracks since our last conversation, and my tailor, who didn’t follow skating whatsoever, had written to say he would be travelling for several weeks and was unavailable for alterations in May.

I’d decided to leave my apartment empty rather than find a tenant. Sasha had sent photographs of a substantial water leak in the building, but we had been fortunate. It hadn’t affected either of our units. I sent her back an image of Makkachin I’d taken on the beach that morning and closed my computer.

Yurio returned more wound up than he’d been when I sent him away. He went to decompress in the hot spring with Yuri for a while, in spite of his initial protests about group baths. As soon as I joined them, he excused himself, leaving just Yuri and me. Unflapped by his departure, I settled happily against the rocks.

“How was your nap?” I asked.

“I couldn’t sleep,” Yuri sighed. He’d been lying with his arms out of the water, his chin upon them so he floated on his stomach with his legs extended behind him, but he reconfigured himself so he sat facing me. “Ah,” he grunted and put a hand to his back.

I looked at him quizzically.

“A muscle spasm,” he said.

“Come here. Let me see it.”

“It already stopped.”

I moved over next to him anyway and angled his shoulders so his back was to me. With only my hands, I washed him, pushing with my thumbs where his muscles felt tight. He let his head tip backwards, so that it fell against my chest, and moaned.

“Am I hurting you?” I asked.

“Yes, but don’t stop.”

Moving my hands upwards to his shoulders, I began to massage them. “Are you still thinking about your _eros_?”

“Mmhm.”

“And have you come up with anything?”

“Not—not yet. I’m sorry. I’m trying.”

I put my mouth near his ear, as he had once done to me. “I’m certain you will discover it.”

He shivered against me in the hot water.

At dinner that night, as he lay with his arms folded on the table, head cradled on them beside his bowl of steamed rice, he announced that he’d found it! His _eros_! Had our time together in the onsen done the trick? Or had it been our lunch date? I waited, ecstatic, for him to look at me, only to be made jealous by my own meal.

It lost flavor after that, but it gave me something to work with. I said so, laughing rather than admit to being wounded by his words. Yuri excused himself shortly after, his cheeks and ears red, and once he’d gone I sullenly poked at the remainder of my food.

Was I so ineffective? Did he really think that little of himself? Had he actually compared sexual love to a pork cutlet bowl?

“My god,” Yurio muttered. His cheeks were puffed out with food like a squirrel’s. “You’re even more pathetic than I thought.”

* * *

With katsudon as his muse, Yuri began his slow transformation, but after nearly a week of practice he was still nowhere near Yurio’s level. His frame was sloppy, his emotions unfocused. My flirtations had been pointless. I had no idea how to inspire him, short of covering myself in egg and rice.

I could not return to Russia, not when we were starting to make progress, but he had no chance of a better showing this weekend. I should never have allowed my pride to agree to Yurio’s terms! He’d be furious when I refused to go home with him next week, but he was better off with Yakov. One day he would see that and be grateful for my decision. I didn’t look forward to his immediate anger, however. Disappointment isn’t quite the same as surprise.

I didn't sleep at all that night, but I did discover that _sake_ , while sour, is as effective as shots in matters of drinking to forget your sorrows.

* * *

You are familiar with the events of the Hot Springs on Ice competition between the two Yuris, so I will not bore you by giving my full account, only say that there is something deeply satisfying in seeing your heart's desire dressed in your clothing. Yuri wears my shirts around our apartment in St. Petersburg when his are waiting to be washed. I adore laundry day! He no longer allows me to send it out, but at least my folding skills are exceptional.

In the moments before he took to the ice for his first public performance of _eros_ , Yuri stood before me trembling with adrenaline, a vision in black, his body filling out the costume more beautifully than mine ever had at seventeen. My heart nearly stopped when he embraced me. I’d forgotten the sensation of his arms around my neck. It had been worth the money to have my old costumes shipped to Japan.

Yurio’s performance had been fantastic, the best I’d seen from him so far, and my Yuri was rightly nervous to skate in his wake. To evoke _eros_ , he would become katsudon, he said. “Please watch me.” As if I could have done otherwise! He has no idea of his true appeal, even now.

“I love katsudon,” I told him, with as much fondness as I could muster at such an absurd comparison, and kissed his hair so gently I doubt he felt it.

He winked at me seconds before the music started. Ice, like champagne, brings out another side of him, but I found that I wanted more of the one that had just embraced me, this quiet and uncertain Yuri who chewed his lip when he was nervous. I wanted to be the one to peel the costume from his damp skin, to bathe and feed him, tend to the blisters on his feet.

I’d fallen under his spell again. Shaking it off, I focused on the technical aspects of his performance. He started out strong, his movements more sensual than yesterday—he hadn’t moved like this in practice! What had he done differently? But he became distracted in the second half and his precision suffered. Sure, his style had enchanted the crowd, but if he couldn’t master a _triple_ jump, he shouldn’t be thinking about quads. And if we couldn’t work on quads, there was little point in us continuing this.

Nevertheless, he was stunning. The crowd exploded when he finished, cheering him off the ice, and because he allowed me, I put my arms around him.

If it had been me performing, Yakov would have lectured me as soon as I’d reached him. It had always been his way to correct what needed to be corrected immediately. He didn’t soften criticism by cushioning it with praise. That wasn’t his job. I had been good before he came into my life, but he turned me into a world-class skater, a champion, and I wanted to give Yuri the same opportunity.

Several people cast me dark looks from the nearby stands as I offered him feedback. I supposed it was only natural they would feel protective of him; this was his hometown, after all. But he needed to hear what I said if he was going to improve. My words appeared to have defeated him, but I told myself I had only said them in his best interest.

The crowd continued to chant his name even after we’d gone into the locker room while the ceremony was being set up. Yurio had been so upset by the unbalanced reaction to their performances, he didn’t stay for the podium. Yuko spoke to me while Yuri changed and said that she and the girls would drive him to the airport shortly, that he planned to fly back to Russia that night. I told her I’d follow up with him later, to make sure he’d gotten home safely. He must’ve known what my decision would be with regards to returning home and spared us both the argument.

The podium had been positioned at the center of the ice and lit by spotlights, a narrow carpet running up to it. A newscaster waited with a microphone. Yuri trembled as he approached the setup and halved his stride.

“I can’t go up there alone,” he whispered.

I frowned. “Why not?”

He seemed to have temporarily lost the ability to speak. Fearing he might fall and ruin both of our seasons with a shattered ankle, I put a hand on his back and stepped up alongside him.

“Better?”

He nodded tightly. The newscaster handed him the microphone, but Yuri blinked at it as though it were alien technology and began to mumble incoherently. When Makka is anxious, it helps to pet him. Something about it calms him down. Why not a person? I put an arm around Yuri’s back and the other on his forearm. Like magic, he straightened and thanked the crowd for their support. (At least, I _think_ that’s what he said. He spoke in Japanese.) In return, they cried their love for him.

Since Yuri needed to improve his public image, I encouraged him to meet with his fans after the ceremony ended. We spent a half hour on the steps outside the Ice Castle posing for photographs and answering questions about his upcoming season.

“Do you think you have a chance at winning the Grand Prix after what happened last year?” asked a bald reporter with a fat neck.

“I—” Yuri began and scratched his cheek. He looked toward the clouds. “Well…?”

“You just saw what he’s capable of,” I said, putting an arm around Yuri’s shoulders again. “Yuri qualified last year without my help. I have full confidence in his ability to qualify for the Grand Prix again this year and no doubt that he will make the podium at the final.”

A woman with a red scarf raised a hand. “Viktor, will you return to figure skating?”

“Let’s keep this about Yuri Katsuki,” I said. “Next question.”

“Viktor, is it true you came here because of a YouTube video?”

“I saw a YouTube video of Yuri skating, that’s correct, but I’m here because he asked me to be.”

Yuri whipped his head around and frowned. “Why would you—?” he began, but whatever he was going to say was interrupted by the next question.


	6. Chapter 6

Living near the ocean eased the disorientation of life in Japan. St. Petersburg, where I’d spent my entire life, is also a port city and if I’d moved inland, I would’ve missed the water.

I took Makkachin on long walks along the coast every morning. There was a wide bathing beach in Hasetsu at the base of the castle, a few minutes’ walk from the Katsukis’ home, but I preferred the ribbon of sand that belonged to the seaside park and ran for seven kilometers along the bay toward the neighboring city. Whatever the buildings behind me, whatever language people spoke, the ocean was the same one that surrounded all continents, no matter its changing name, the same water that washed ashore a world away in my hometown.

I’d never taken the time to simply enjoy the sound of the waves back home, to walk along the shore or stop and listen to the gulls. Their call was the same haunting laughter that had followed me during my runs. I’d never really noticed it until it was absent.

Unfortunately, after Yurio returned to Russia, my Yuri regressed to the same frustrating behavior he’d exhibited when I’d first arrived, and what little progress we had made in our relationship over the past two weeks was lost. Once again, he shied away from my hand and made excuses for why we could not be together off of the ice. My tenuous happiness evaporated.

* * *

I told myself that it was a stressful time for him, that we were still learning how to navigate one another; however, I knew the problem was more serious than nerves the morning he didn’t show up for practice.

The Ice Castle’s not so different from my home rink. When you think about it, there’s not much to a skating facility. Put me on the ice anywhere in the world and I am content. Skating is a universal language. Still, not all rinks are the same. Some are designed to accommodate an audience and others are so boxed in, they feel claustrophobic. It’s very quiet in the Ice Castle. The owners had been generous to allow Yuri the privacy to practice as he wished. I was glad I’d decided against speaking to Yakov about him. I don’t think Yuri would’ve have fared well in Russia, having to practice in front of other people. He might have fallen into the trap of comparing his abilities and pulled out of competition long ago.

I’ve always felt empowered watching the people around me, but then I’ve never suffered from low self esteem. Never doubted myself—not as a skater, anyway—but I was obviously a failure as a coach and I didn’t know how to reconcile that. How to change it. How to build the trust that was critical between us so Yuri could succeed.

I waited an hour for him that morning, but he never arrived for practice and didn’t answer my calls or messages. I was livid and pedaled so hard back to the house that my thighs burned. Screaming wouldn’t help, but I wanted to; I wanted to shake him and ask why, _why_ did you beg me to come here? Why did you ask for my help if you didn’t want it? If you didn’t want _me_?

His mother smiled at me when I came in with the dog. “There you are, Vicchan! I missed you at breakfast. Yuri hasn’t come down yet. He took his dinner in his room last night; he only does that when he’s feeling poorly. You don’t look happy today. Are you hungry? I’ll make your favorite meal once I’m done folding these.”

“I’m not hungry, thank you.” I smiled a little at her, because it is impossible not to smile at her. She and Yuri have the same eyes. “Please let me finish those for you.”

Some time later, Mari discovered my hiding place behind the front desk, Makkachin at my feet, me with a basket of towels. I folded each with the fierce diligence Yuri had instilled in me. I wasn’t quite as fast at the task as he was, not yet, but you wouldn’t be able to tell mine from his once they were stacked.

“You don’t look so good,” Mari said. Her accent was thicker than Yuri’s. He’d spent many years in America and, champagne-related incidents aside, had developed excellent conversational English, though she spoke it nearly as well as he did. “What did my brother do?”

“He didn’t come to practice today,” I said.

Mari doesn’t express a lot of emotion with her face—unless, of course, she’s confronted with people she admires, in which case her face becomes a fountain. With me it is more like an unremarkable wall. I was surprised by her concern, the vertical crease beside her left eyebrow when she scowled.

“You don’t have to fold those,” she said.

“I told your mother I don’t mind. I find it relaxing,” I said, irritated to hear myself echoing Yuri.

“You intimidate him.”

“How?”

“Don’t act stupid.”

I took a breath. “So what if I do. What am I supposed to do about it?”

Shrugging, she took a towel from the basket. “Did you know our family dog was named after you?”

“I knew you had a poodle.”

She raised one eyebrow. “You don’t think it’s strange?”

“It’s flattering. Plenty of people have named things after me.”

She laughed without it showing on her face. “Yuri has admired you for as long as I can remember, but to him you were a face on a poster. Now you’re here, in his home. You expect things from him.”

“He asked me to come here. In fact, he begged!”

“It doesn’t matter. The more you push, the more he’ll pull away from you.”

“And what do you suggest I do instead?”

She had folded five towels in the time it took me to complete two, and throwing them on top of the basket, stood and wiped her hands on her thighs. “Why did you come here?”

I squinted. “Are you going to repeat what I say to him?”

“You’re not that interesting to me,” she said. I sighed.

“He left an impression on me at a banquet last year. I haven’t stopped thinking about him.”

I don’t think it was the answer she had expected. She was quiet for a few seconds, studying my face, which flushed as it did in the hot spring under her scrutiny.

“Where do you go in the mornings?” she asked.

“What does that have to do with Yuri?”

She narrowed her eyes. “I think I like you better as a poster.”

“Well, I’m not a poster!” I snapped. My heart beat wildly. “I’m trying to figure out why I put my career on hold for this! Why I’m wasting my time on him!”

I swatted the hair blocking my eyes and slumped into my palm. My outburst had roused Makkachin, who yawned in support.

A wailing telephone interrupted us. Mari took care of the customer while I petted Makka between the ears, trying to pick out the few Japanese words I recognized from her rapid speech. Not that I’d be staying in Japan long enough to put them to any use! I might as well start packing.

Presently, she hung up and again looked down where I sat. The urge to yell had passed, but I could still feel my heartbeat in my neck.

“You never answered my question,” she said, crossing her arms.

“What question?”

“About where you go in the mornings.”

“What does it matter?” I asked and threw up a hand.

She narrowed her eyes. “Why won’t you answer me?”

“The beach, okay? I take the dog to the beach.”

“Why?”

“Because it reminds me of home!”

“Ah,” she said. She picked up the basket of towels and held it against her hip. “Unless you’re planning to answer the phone, get out from behind there.”

I groaned to my feet and stretched my back, which had become stiff from sitting on the floor. Unaware of the tension in the room, Makkachin repeatedly licked his paw and used it to clean his eye.

“So … you think I should take him to the _beach_ with me? That's your solution?”

“Do what you want.” Mari sniffed and scribbled something on a notepad beside the register, and in the same unaffected tone said, “Hurt him and I will choke you to death with your gold medals.”

* * *

I didn't wait for him to open his bedroom door. I knocked but opened it myself. It wasn't locked. Yuri was a pathetic lump on the bed underneath a blanket, crouched over his knees as though he were begging something beyond the window for forgiveness.

To my surprise, he accepted the beach invitation without argument. I waited in the corridor outside his room while he changed. He took an apple from the restaurant and with a wave over his shoulder to his sister, who kept a sharp eye on us from behind the front desk, we went out.

It wasn't a warm day, the sky an overcast watercolor of clouds. I left the bicycle at the house and we strolled through the city with Makkachin. I couldn't remember a day without practice growing up or a coach who would have tolerated Yuri’s insubordination, but Yuri was not a child. He walked much of the way with his head down, taking small bites from the apple. He tossed the core into a receptacle at the beach entrance and went ahead of me on the sand.

We settled a short distance from the water, far enough from the waves that we would not get wet, close enough that I could discern the individual bubbles in the froth the waves left behind. They caught the sun when it slipped between cracks in the cloud cover.

I thought about what Mari had said and told Yuri about my love for this place, how the cry of the gulls reminded me of home. He listened to me talk without response, huddled forward over his knees, feet tightly together, finger tracing nonsense in the sand.

“I never thought I’d leave that city,” I said wistfully, “so I never used to notice the seagulls’ cries. Have you ever experienced something like that?”

Rather than answering directly, he shared a story about his time in America, about a girl who had tried to become closer to him. He’d avoided her, he said, to the point of physically shoving her away when she’d offered comfort in a hospital waiting room.

“Wow. Why?” I asked, baffled.

“I didn’t want her to know that I was upset. I felt like she was intruding on my feelings or something, and I hated it.”

Was this his way of explaining his behavior toward me until this point? Barging into his life as I’d done, I must’ve seemed like a monster.

“But,” he continued before I could apologize, “I realized that that Minako, Nishigori, Yuko, my family ... they never treated me like I was weak. They had faith that I would grow and they never stepped over that line.”

“You’re not weak,” I said. “No one who knows you would ever think that.”

He continued to look toward the water. I didn't want to hear his answer, afraid my heart was about to be broken, that he would continue to push me away like the woman in his story, like the woman he saw in his choreography, but I had to know. If I didn't say this now, I never would.

“Yuri, what do you want me to be to you? A father figure?”

“No,” he said, to my immense relief, and I was faced with the more difficult question.

“A brother, then? A friend?”

I took hope from his indecisive grunt, the way his entire body seemed to shrug. There was only one option remaining and I hoped we wanted the same thing.

“Your lover, then,” I said, casually as I could, though my heart sloshed like the waves against the shore. “I’ll try my best.”

He surprised me yet again by leaping to his feet.

“No!” he cried. “No, no!”

Startled by his reaction, I could only stare up at him. It wasn’t like me to be speechless but I couldn’t find my voice.

“I want you to stay who you are, Viktor! I’ve always looked up to you. I ignored you because I didn’t want you to see my shortcomings, but I’ll make it up to you with my skating.”

All my life, people had wanted to meet Viktor Nikiforov, the skater. Few had ever tried to know me. I was ashamed that even with that knowledge, knowing how it felt to be thought of as a fraction of yourself, I had essentially been doing the same thing to him ever since I came to Japan—no, ever since the moment I couldn't look away from his photograph.

I knew I had to forget about Sochi, about the banquet and everything I thought I knew about him. Whatever had happened between us in December, Yuri Katsuki was the person standing above me on the sand. We had both seen each other as pictures: his on a wall, mine on a phone screen.

This was not what I wanted, but it was not a rejection. I accepted him as he was and offered my hand.

“Okay,” I said, “but I won’t go easy on you. That’s my way of showing my love.”

He slid his palm into mine, dry and smooth and very warm, very different from the hands that had held me at the banquet. He pulled me to my feet. I had the desire to brush the hair back from his face, to feel its feather softness against my fingers once more and mould them to the shape of his jaw. I did neither. I held his hand since it was what he would allow and prayed my feelings could somehow reach him through a few inches of skin.

He let out a happy sigh and tucked his hands in his pockets. We began to walk. Makkachin trotted between us on the sand with his tongue lolling out, chasing gulls into the water.

“I think that’s the most you’ve ever said to me since I’ve been here,” I said after a few minutes of silence. “How did you enjoy Detroit?”

“We weren’t actually in the city. It’s rundown. Phichit and I did a bit of exploring while were were there—it’s not like the cities here. The skating club is in a suburb about thirty kilometers north. It was beautiful there.”

“Phichit?”

“My friend from Thailand. We were rink mates.”

“Oh, right. Is he the one who was injured? Who you visited in the hospital?”

Yuri shook his head. “No, that was someone else.”

“Do you keep in touch with them?”

“Not really. Phichit’s the only one I considered a friend.”

“I can understand that,” I said. “The people at my home rink are friendly but we aren’t friends.”

The clouds moved. Yuri squinted into the light. “I assumed everyone would want to be friends with you.”

I knelt down and pitched a broken piece of shell into the advancing waves. “I have a few. Chris you know. A couple I went to school with. My neighbor—she watches Makka when I’m away. What about you?”

“My family, I guess. Yuko. Minako.”

I shaded my eyes from the sun, which was trying to peek at us from behind the clouds. “I’m going to tell you something, Yuri. I have a hard time trusting people.”

“Why?”

“I suppose I’m suspicious of what they want from me.”

“Do you trust me?” he asked, crouching down as well. Overhead, the gulls cried. I focused on a point on the horizon, where the sea greeted the sky, and swallowed my nerves.

“You didn’t ask what I want from you in return,” I said. “Do you want to know?”

He nodded.

“I haven’t felt _good_ in a while. I gave everything to the sport but neglected myself. I didn’t know how to fix that. Then I met you and it … it was like I was waking up. You make me _feel_ things, Yuri.”

I stared at the cluster of islands off shore, close but not touching. Never touching. One day, they would crumble into the sea.

“I want to be more to you than your coach. I want us to be friends. I want to be … I want you to be yourself as well. Don’t push me away anymore. Can you do that?”

Yuri was quiet. I’d repelled him with my impatience before so I didn’t dare move, didn’t dare look at him. I would wait as long as he required. Makka was a soggy mess in the surf, but I didn’t call for him to come to me as I normally would. To calm my heart, I held lungfuls of air that smelled of the sea.

I gasped when Yuri eventually settled against my side, when his hand covered mine.

Hours later, when we had retired to our separate rooms and I lay on my back tasting the echo of salt air, I could still feel the ghost of it.


	7. Chapter 7

Summer transformed Hasetsu into an inescapable steam room.

Let me reiterate: Summertime on Kyushu is hellish. After a quarter century living in the Baltic region, I was accustomed to temperate July weather and struggled to adjust to the climate. There were days I panted worse than Makka from the humidity, its density so exhausting I wouldn’t run outside unless it was early morning, or the sun had already retired and moonlight cast shadowy hands across the city. Even then, not three steps out the door, I was drenched in sweat.

As you would expect, Yuri and I spent countless hours at the Ice Castle, protected by its roof and high walls, blissfully cool! He never complained about how early we arrived or if he had missed the sunset, which he liked to observe from the bridge. I think he would’ve slept at the Ice Castle, if Yuko had installed a cot in the locker room. There was a sense of ease that settled about him whenever he laced his skates.

But he soon tired of my frequent complaints about the heat.

I lay on the floor at breakfast fanning myself with a magazine, the rice gone cold.

“Why don’t you go for a swim in the ocean?” he sighed. “The water won’t be warm until August.”

What a novel idea! Initially, the shock of cold water robbed me of my breath, prickling my skin and scalp, frigid despite how scorching the sand was. But once I’d acclimated, I spent an hour on my back tossed by the waves, saltwater filling my nostrils and ears as Makka whined for me at the shoreline.

And after that marvellous day had blistered the skin on my shoulders and nose, on my thighs and chest and back, leaving them pink and tender and me trembling with an alien fever, Yuri thrust into my hands a tube of burn ointment.

“Will you rub it on me?” I asked in my misery. I couldn’t believe I’d been so careless. I’ve had to limit sun exposure since I was born.

With a long-suffering sigh (you would’ve thought we’d already been married for years at this point), he ordered me to remove my shirt and lie down. Encouraged by the suggestion, I sagged across the base of my bed and, with a painful wink, flung my shirt at him.

The ointment soothed the uncomfortable stretch in my skin, which felt a size too small for my body. He applied it to my shoulders and back, to my neck and the tips of my ears, which hurt so much I winced when he touched them.

“Sorry,” he said, but there was little apology in his voice and something suspiciously like laughter.

He’d settled on my thighs, his legs pressed on either side of mine, and made long passes with his hands along the planes of my back. His touch grew lighter as he worked outward, until his fingers hovered just above my waist.

“You’ve gained weight,” he said.

“I’m allowed a pound or two.”

He made a quiet noise. “It’s more than a pound.”

Intending to look at him over my shoulder, I craned around, but it tugged on my skin and I could only put my head down and groan into the pillow. “Are you saying you only love me for my body?”

Although I couldn’t see his face, I’m convinced he rolled his eyes. “I’m finished. You should put some of this on your face.” He climbed off of me and the bed, sitting on the floor next to the coffee table where he set the ointment.

He took out his phone, and from the combination of colors I glimpsed over his shoulder, I deduced he was checking his Gmail, probably for a word from his composer friend. His free program music was due to arrive any day now, and the wait had led to frequent phone breaks whenever his notification tone chimed. He’d get an excited gleam in his eye at the prospect that this email might be _the one_ , then disappointment would show in the twist of his mouth when it turned out to be the JSF newsletter or suggested accounts to follow on Instagram.

(He had a private account, as it turns out; we have since corrected this.)

I hadn’t checked my email in over a week. There are only so many ways you can answer the same questions without going mad and desiring to test how long computer circuits will hold up against an onsen. Anyone who wanted an update on me could find what they needed to know online, and close friends had my number.

Yakov hadn’t contacted me since he dropped me at the airport. I took it as reluctant acceptance on his part. When I’d left Russia, I hadn't thought about how he might feel as a result of my decision; but seeing Yuri’s miserable form on my floor, imagining him being the one to announce he was taking a season off without warning, him flying to another country without me, him going off to train someone else—I would be devastated. I owed Yakov a drink and an apology the next time we saw each other.

“Have you heard from your composer about the music?” I asked, though I’d already inferred the answer from the droop in Yuri’s posture. I retrieved my shirt from the floor. My skin was suddenly freezing and my teeth rattled until I was covered again. Then, just as suddenly, I felt feverish.

“Not yet,” he sighed.

“It will be here soon.” I uselessly rubbed my arms. “It's only been a short while.”

In fact, it had been weeks, but I would rather a composer take her time. Yuri bristled at my clumsy attempt to placate him but recovered from it quickly. “I should run before dinner.”

“You went running this morning!”

He cast me a smug look. “Don't worry. I won’t ask you to come with me in your condition.”

“Why don't we take the rest of the day off?” I said, surprising myself. He looked at me blankly.

“To do what?”

“I’ve been here since April. You haven’t really shown me around. What kind of boyfriend are you?”

He let out a derisive puff of air. “You’ve gotten around fine on your own.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I see the pictures you post, Viktor. You’ve seen more of the town than I have since I’ve been back.”

“Well, see?” I said, scooting forward so my legs hung freely off the edge of the bed. The front of my thighs felt crisp; when I pressed my hands to my burned skin, they left startling white impressions. “That's what I mean. You're not having any fun.”

“I'm not here to have fun. Anyway …” He held up a finger. “... you’re the one who said if you want to become a champion, you must completely devote yourself to the sport and avoid distractions.”

It _sounded_ like something I would say, but I had no memory of it. I scratched my head. “When did I say that?”

He sighed. “Three years ago in _Skating_ magazine.”

“Ah. Does that mean you’re willing to speak about costumes now?”

“Not tonight.”

My scalp now throbbed where I’d scratched it. I moaned and pressed my face into the bedsheets. Yuri was quiet for almost a minute, then crawled next to the bed and rested his chin on his arms, so our faces were level.

“Do you feel that poorly?” he asked.

“I’m either too hot or too cold. I think I’m dying.”

“Hmm.”

He touched the crown of my head for as long as it would take a butterfly to alight on a flower, and then the depression in the mattress from the weight of his arms lifted. I opened an eye.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back,” Yuri said, already halfway out the door. I didn’t know where Makka was. He had abandoned me for a spot of sun somewhere, no doubt.

The rapid swish of fabric that approached my door could only belong to one person.

“Yuri says you’re sunburned,” Mari said.

“Regrettably, yes.”

“We have ointment downstairs”

“Yuri has already applied it to my back.”

Her eyes opened a fraction wider, though she still appeared bored by me. “How is he doing?”

“He’s improving. You should come and watch him sometime.”

“I don't know if he’d be comfortable with that.”

“Your parents don't come see him. Why not?”

She lifted a shoulder. “Yuri has always preferred to be alone.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” I said.

Irritation replaced her usual cast of boredom and she crossed her arms firmly across her chest. “You’ve been here three months. You think you know him?”

“I do.”

She opened her mouth as if she might say something else, wide enough for a fly to slip inside, but in the end only huffed.

“Mari!” Yuri had returned with Makka, his laptop tucked underneath his arm. “Do you need something?”

“Are you two going out again or will you be here for dinner? Mom wants to know.”

“We’re staying in,” Yuri said.

“Make sure he wears sunscreen next time.” With an icy glance at me (if only it could have taken the burn from my skin!), she left us.

He shut the door and looked at me. “What was that about?”

“It was nothing. I thought you wanted to go running?”

Makka lumbered up onto the bed. His bulk overflowed the second pillow. I scratched the top of his head. Yuri settled on the sofa and opened his laptop on his knees.

“Since you're not feeling well, I thought we could watch something instead,” he said.

“A movie?” I perked up at the suggestion of two hours alone with him.

“I was going to show you a video of that friend I knew in Detroit. He's back in Thailand now but he still trains with my old coach. He’s been uploading a lot of clips to YouTube lately.”

“Are you going to sit all the way over there?”

“You could move.” The rapid tap-tap-tap of his fingers on the keys fell like rain.

“If I sit over there, I’ll be cold.”

“Use a blanket.”

“I’m near death!” I said. “You’re heartless.”

He clicked something and sat back, resting his head against the wall. After another minute, I sighed.

“Okay, you win.”

I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and crossed the room to sit with him. Makka watched us from the bed and thumped his tail. Even in the blanket, I shivered. Yuri covered his mouth to conceal a laugh.

“What?” I said.

He glanced at me. “Sorry. It’s funny after how much you’ve complained about the heat.”

“I’m glad my suffering amuses you.”

“I don’t know. You seem to enjoy my suffering a lot.”

Guilt curled up in my stomach like a cat. I swallowed and lowered my eyes. If I was going to die from sun exposure, I would do it with a clear conscience.

“Yuri, if anything I have said has offended you, I apologize. My intention is—”

“I’m teasing you.” He nudged me with a light elbow to my ribs. “Watch this jump.”

I love to watch Yuri’s eyes when he's excited. He doesn't disguise his emotions but wears them honestly. The video was nearly ten minutes long, shot from a stationary camera positioned at the edge of the skating rink, and Yuri’s eyes were wide with pride. Although his friend in Thailand, Phichit Chulanont, was by all definitions a viable competitor for the Grand Prix, there was no envy in Yuri’s expression, no discomfort in his body language. Every time Phichit’s blades left the ice, Yuri held his breath and after each successful landing, he nudged me in the side and smiled.

“Isn’t he great?” he said. “I can’t believe how far he’s come since Detroit.”

He chose another video from among the recommendations that followed, of a skater named Jean-Jacques Leroy—JJ, most people called him—from Canada. He’d been around for a few seasons, taking bronze in last season’s Grand Prix Final, but due to his aggressive personality wasn’t on friendly terms with most of us.

“He will be one to beat,” I said. Yuri drew his lower lip into his mouth and said nothing.

JJ’s video ended with his signature and irritating catchphrase. Amusing, yes, but arrogant—though his fans seem to like it. Ours have taken to forming hearts with their hands whenever Yuri and I appear in public together.

The video advanced automatically to one of mine, my short program from the previous season. I huddled in the blanket and rested my head beside his against the back of the sofa.

“I can’t believe you skated to an pop song,” Yuri said.

“Yakov did his best to talk me out of it, but I wanted to do something different.” Squinting, I lifted my head slightly. “Was I very pale last year, or is it something with your computer?”

“You look healthier since you’ve been here,” Yuri said, though he dimmed the screen’s backlight. “There is certainly more color in your face.” He twisted his mouth to conceal it, but I discerned his hidden laughter.

“Are you mocking me?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but again he didn’t sound it any more than he had on the bed. He nodded toward the laptop screen. “I like the combination you do here.”

“We could work it into your program.”

He shook his head. His hair tickled my ear. We watched my long program next, the one from last year, and Yuri sighed at the most passionate stanza.

“Why did you choose to copy this one?” I asked.

“The song,” he said.

It was probably an after effect of the sunburn, but my eyes stung recalling the photograph which had inspired it. “I had it written.”

“I know.” He drew in a breath. “It made me feel …”

I turned my head to study his profile. His eyes were closed. “What? What did you feel?”

“I don’t know,” Yuri said. “That I knew you. Or knew a part of you. You understand what it is like to feel alone.”

I laid my head on his shoulder. “So many people love you, Yuri. They want you to succeed.”

He didn’t respond.

The next video began to play: his attempt at my program. Though he tried to stop it before it could begin, I claimed his hand and shushed him.

“Don’t. I’d like to see it again.”

“It’s so embarrassing,” Yuri groaned, rubbing his free hand over his face. “What did you see in me?”

“Passion. Longing.” I’d grown suddenly scorching in the blanket and slipped it from my shoulders, only to immediately break into a cold sweat. I instinctively drew closer to him. “Look at you, how engaged you are with the music, even though we can’t hear it.”

He was still through the rest of the performance, and when it ended, I squeezed his hand one more time and closed my eyes for what I perceived as a few seconds.

When I opened them again, the room was dark. Yuri was watching a movie on his computer with headphones, his left hand stroking Makka’s head, his right fitted over my knee, and on the table before us sat a tray of dinner for two, still steaming.

* * *

On my return trip to the beach a week and a half later, I covered every last inch of my healed skin in the thickest sunblock I could purchase. Yuri came with me and we spent a glorious afternoon chasing each other through the surf, attempting to smash handfuls of sand in each other's hair.

We washed it from one another in the community shower after: my hands on him, his hands on me, Makka jumping up onto both of us. I've never laughed so much.


	8. Chapter 8

His long program music finally arrived, along with a new theme Yuri had selected for himself: _on my love_. I don’t have to tell you how pleased that made me.

But not all of our days were domestic bliss. Plenty of times we left the Ice Castle without speaking, and didn’t speak to or look at each other again until we were home and bathed and fed.

My patience flagged as the summer matured. Yuri grew increasingly exhausted and frustrated with himself; consequently, he became reactive to my frequent criticism. Sometimes he argued back and sometimes he skated away from me, his posture rigid, only to repeat the choreography more sloppily than what I had just seen. When that happened, it made me furious because I knew what he was capable of, but we were struggling against years of muscle memory and self-doubt, which can be nearly impossible to overcome.

By the end of August, weeks away from the regional block competitions that would determine his eligibility for the rest of the season, Yuri continued to struggle with nearly all of his jumps.

“That's no good,” I shouted. “You’re still pre-rotating too quickly. All of your energy is going toward the ice. We need that height!”

He was too far away for me to hear, but I could see the sigh throughout his entire body. We had been at this for hours. It was imperative we continue, but I couldn’t afford for him to have a breakdown. I removed my jacket and skated out to him.

“You need to relax,” I said, with a firm yet gentle touch to his arm. “You’re too tense.”

He folded over himself at the waist and positioned both hands on his knees to catch his breath. “How am I supposed to relax knowing I have to perform this in public in a few weeks?”

“Don’t think about the audience. The only person you have to charm is me, remember? And you’ve already done that many times. You can do it again.”

“Not in front of other people.”

I grinned. “Should I give you a bottle of champagne beforehand?”

He scowled up at me. “I don’t drink before a competition.”

It was obviously not the time to reminisce. “Then we will do something else to get your mind off of it. Give me your hand.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever tried a death spiral before?”

He pulled upright and raked both hands back through his hair, like he might yell, but he took another breath and stared at the hand I extended. “Yuko and I used to pair skate sometimes when we were kids. Not in competition.”

“I find it exciting. We must have absolute trust in one another. If you were to let go of my hand, I would fall.”

He frowned. “I don't … how should we go about it?”

“Take my hand. We’ll go very slowly. I’m going to skate toward you—yes, like this. Now on my mark, I want you to pivot.”

He did, planting his toe firmly in the ice, and extended his arm, his hand locked with mine. I circled him twice on the inside edge of my blade, my body nearly parallel to the ice. It felt like flying.

We raised each other back up and glided to a stop.

“How did that feel?” I asked, brushing the hair back from my eyes.

“Good. It felt good.”

“Shall we try it again?”

There was a hint of pink on his cheeks, the hint of a smile on his lips. “Yes.”

We performed three more spirals, the final backwards, and when we stopped for water, all of his earlier anxiety and anger had been tempered. I leaned my hip against the boards and watched him drink.

“It's a shame we wouldn’t be allowed to perform that in competition,” I said. “We would be beautiful together.”

“It would have to be an exhibition,” he said offhandedly.

That gave me an idea. “I'll make you a deal.” I swiped his water and drank from it. “You medal at the Grand Prix Final, and I will perform the exhibition skate with you. I’ll even have the music made.”

His eyebrows shot up and promptly fell with the rest of his face. “That assumes I medal,” he mumbled.

I dried my lips with the edge of my thumb. “Don’t you want to skate with me, Yuri?”

Swallowing, he wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve and nodded several times. “Yes.”

“Then it’s settled. I had better start thinking about a routine. December is only a few months away. We’ll need time to practice.”

Movement caught my eye. Across the rink, near the ice access from the office, Yuko waved at us and tapped her wrist to indicate the time. The evening free skate would be starting soon, and we needed to leave unless we wanted an audience.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you,” Yuri said.

“Don’t think about it.” I stroked his forearm where it lay on the boards. “How would you feel about a lift?”

“Are you lifting me or am I lifting you?”

“It might be easier for me to lift you since I’m taller, but I wouldn’t mind if you want to do it the other way.”

“All right,” he said with a faint grin and reached for his skate guards. “I’m hungry.”

“Then you are feeling better. Let’s call it a day. We’ll resume in the morning.”

“Hot spring?”

“Will you wash my back?” I asked.

“If you wash mine first,” he said, a particular glimmer in his eye.

It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. I smiled at my triumph. “You talked me into it.”

  
illustration by Ludicrouslyidiotic

* * *

Although I believe Yuri would have been content to compete in my costumes indefinitely, I’d been insistent he have something custom made for his long program and reiterated this during our bath.

“After all, the song is yours,” I said, spilling a palmful of water across his shoulders. The onsen had closed for the night, leaving only the two of us and the stars. “The costume should be yours too.”

“I guess.” He relaxed against me.

I brushed my lips along the shell of his ear. “Trust me.”

We were still on the topic when we went up to bed.

“I wish you had allowed me to send your measurements to my tailor,” I said as we parted for the night. “It would have been my gift to you.”

“You're not paying for anything else! You still haven’t said how much your coaching fee is going to be.” He had both hands in his hair like weeds and his glasses were crooked. “There is a woman in town who made my junior costumes. I'll use her.”

“Fine,” I said with a hand to his cheek. His tongue stole out to wet his lips and I forced myself to take a step away. “I’ll go with you.”

Which was how I found myself in a cluttered studio apartment belonging to a woman named Hisako, who extended a measuring tape from Yuri’s inner thigh to his ankle. She wore her dark hair pinned back and a pair of thin-rimmed glasses, like the style Chris wore. She was old enough to be Yuri’s mother but there were no photographs of children anywhere.

“You are only an inch taller than the last time I measured you,” she said through the pencil in her teeth, which she whipped out to make a note on the slip of paper at her knee. She bit down on it again and wrapped the tape measure around his thigh. “But you have more muscle.”

I sat drinking tea on the red sofa with my legs crossed, entertained by Yuri’s constipated expression.

“Yuri tells me you made his costumes when he was younger,” I said to Hisako.

“Yes, we met through Minako. I design the costumes for her students. Skating’s not so different—” Yuri squirmed and she scolded him in Japanese, holding up a pin. He bowed his head and offered an apology.

She measured from his crotch to his waist on both his front and his back, and he turned an appealing shade of red. I swung my leg.

“How soon will you need this?” she asked.

“Early September,” he said apologetically.

“That’s not much time,” Hisako said. “You can look through the fabrics I have here, but we’ll have to place a rush order if you have something special in mind.”

“Perhaps something sparkly,” I said.

Yuri turned his head to look at me. “I don't want to stand out too much!”

“You will be very small from the stands, don’t worry. Why do you think I chose pink for last season?”

“Because it looks nice with your hair?” Yuri said.

“Well, yes, but also because it has high visibility.”

“As if someone could forget to watch you!”

“I certainly didn't want to take the risk,” I said and winked.

After Hisako had finished the assault on Yuri’s lower half, she stood and measured his chest and arms and back. Yuri’s color returned to his normal shade and I cheerfully refilled my tea.

“Maybe you ought to pick the fabric,” Yuri said to me, a deep crease forming between his eyebrows. He looks like his sister when he frowns. He folded his arms across his chest, the way he did when he was feeling overwhelmed, and Hisako smacked his thigh. Exhaling heavily, he forced them to his sides.

“Why should I choose for you?” I said.

“You should see the costumes I wore when I was younger.”

Hisako frowned. “Are you criticizing my work?”

“No,” Yuri said. “Just my choices.”

“I’ll happily give my opinion,” I said, “but you must choose something that suits you. That suits your music. Only you can do that.”

“You'll want a finger loop on this, yes?” Hisako asked with the tape measure at his wrist.

“Yes,” Yuri sighed, as though a finger loop heralded the end of days.

Once he’d been excused from the platform, he browsed the fabric selection by skimming his hand across the bolts and stopped on a dark, lifeless blue.

“I like this,” he said. Of course he would like that one; it stood out the least of all. Hisako seemed to share my concern.

“That's for school uniforms,” she said.

I canted my head. “Perhaps something more exciting?”

“I said I like this one!” Yuri snapped. “You told me to pick something.”

I smiled through his outburst and looked to Hisako. “What about an overlay to give it some dimension?”

“I have some sheer fabrics ... ” Hisako said. She pointed to a few thinner bolts of organza and mesh.

“Hm,” I said. I’d never been fond of organza--too slippery. She tapped her lips with the pencil.

“I do have beaded tulle; it’s left over from a wedding. It's quite expensive, however.”

“I'm not worried about the cost,” I said.

“You are _not the one_ paying for this!” Yuri hissed.

“You’re right; I’m sorry. _Yuri_ is not worried about the cost. How would the tulle look over the blue he’s chosen?”

Yuri threw up his hands and huffed something I did not understand. Snickering, Hisako layered the fabrics together and the drab blue became a cosmos.

“What do you think, Yuri?” I said. His jaw was clenched tight. I formed a star with my hand on the small of his back and rubbed it gently.

“I—it’s nice,” he admitted, “but I think it could be distracting.”

“What if we use it only around his neck?” I said to Hisako. “That way he won’t see it when he extends his arms.”

“We could bring it to his shoulder and extend it along the collar and lapels.” She pointed to the drawing we had brought. “Is this black panel at his waist transparent?”

“Yes,” I said at the same time that Yuri said “No!” and then sighed and muttered a resigned, “Fine.”

We selected fabric for the decorations and for his pants. Once Hisako had written up the work order, Yuri inched toward the door.

“Thank you, Hisako,” he said. “I know it will be beautiful.”

“I’ll let you know when I need you back for a fitting.”

We went out. One floor down, I made a show of patting my pockets on the landing.

“Oh, how silly of me! I’ve forgotten my phone. You go ahead. I’ll catch up in a moment.”

He cast me a wan look but continued down the stairs, and when I was certain he would not double back, I climbed to the top and knocked on Hisako’s door.

“Hi again,” I said. “I wondered if you would have time to make one more costume? The same measurements. Here is a list of the materials and a reference photo, but I’d like it in blue.”

She squinted at the picture and scanned the list I handed her. “I’ll have to order most of this.”

“There’s no rush. I won’t need it until the end of the year, but I’d rather he didn’t know about it. It’s a surprise.”

Her mouth ticked at the corner.

* * *

With only a week and a half remaining before the block championships, our grueling schedule began to pay off. The percentage of Yuri’s successful landings increased, although he still had yet to land them all in the same performance, and final alterations to his costume were finished. Hisako was a miracle.

On the eve of the competition, I was watching Yuri’s long program with Yuko and Takeshi, who appeared more tense than his wife: neck muscles strained, meaty fists planted on the boards.

“Do you really think he can do this in competition?” he asked me under his breath.

I didn’t take my eyes from Yuri. “I know he can.”

“Have you ever seen him nervous?”

I’d seen him half naked on a stripper pole. “He will be fine.”

Takeshi glanced to me. “I mean _really_ nervous. The kind where he stops talking. It’s been just the two of you for months. Now he’s got to do this in front of an audience? You’d better be prepared for how he’s going to react.”

Yuri landed his triple axel and moments later, flubbed the following triple flip. I rubbed my forehead. “Do you have any suggestions?”

“You have to keep him calm,” Yuko said.

Takeshi sniffed. “Easier said than done.”

“Are you still coming with us tomorrow?” I asked.

“Takeshi is,” Yuko said. “I’m staying here with the girls. They’d like to go but it’s such a long weekend for them. I think Minako is planning to go along.”

Yuri was on his last jump combination: a triple lutz followed by a triple toe loop. He landed both but touched the ice on the remaining quad. The music reached its finale, and I swore that I could feel his grief across the ice.

* * *

Three things I learned at the block championships:

  1. Yuri withers if I scold him in public following a program. Excessive hugging is a more effective motivator.
  2. He doesn’t realize that he inspires those around him and can be ignorant of other people’s feelings until it is brought to his attention. This shed new light on his behavior toward me back in April.
  3. My latest choice of lip balm, requiring application with a fingertip, had been a magnificent investment.



My new suit earned an honorable mention because I was certain, from the way he became flustered when he first saw me wearing it, that Yuri found me attractive in formal wear.

The first day went smoothly. His score for _eros_ was excellent, although I was surprised he hadn’t broken a hundred points—it wasn’t as though he had been under pressure!—and said so.

“Right,” he said, “because you’ve scored above a hundred points to break the world record multiple times.”

I was glad he understood me.

The next day, he was stunning in the new costume for his long program. I don’t think he realized the way he looked, the effect he had on everyone. No one could take their eyes from him, especially the petite blond teenager who seemed to worship him. He watched me fix Yuri’s hair and sweep lip balm across his mouth. Yuri’s mind was elsewhere. He was unresponsive, though he put his arms loosely around me when I hugged him for luck.

We’d agreed yesterday that Yuri would lower the difficulty of his long program and only attempt one quad, so he would peak later in the season, but Yuri and I share a rebellious streak. The coach in me was angry he’d ignored my advice and reverted the program, but the rest of me had been captivated by his thrilling performance, by his daring. And rather than lecture him for injuring himself when his head struck the boards—which wouldn’t have happened if he had followed my instructions—I held out my arms.

I felt badly about not catching him when he leapt for a hug, but I noticed his nosebleed too late. One must be careful with virgin wool. Blood doesn’t always wash out easily and I am squeamish.

I made up for it later. (See the first point above with regards to excessive hugging.)

* * *

Though he does it unintentionally, and I am loathe to confess it even here, Yuri has me beaten in the “surprise” department.

He’d been requested to participate in a live televised press conference about the upcoming Grand Prix, which Minako helpfully translated for me since it was in Japanese. Imagine how I felt, sitting among his friends and family (in a robe, for the record), and hearing him declare his love for me.

We’d discussed his theme for the season. _Love_ had been the logical choice, given the themes of his individual programs, but I was shocked when Minako leaned toward me and said, quietly, “He calls what he feels for you _love_. You are the only person he’s ever wanted to hold onto.”

I don’t cry, but my eyes felt wetter than usual when I blinked and Makka had to remind me to continue petting him, with a helpful nudge of a cold nose. I held him against my chest.

No one had ever spoken about me like that before. If I hadn’t already adored him, I would now. But because I did, my heart, my heart! I thought it would burst. If I’d been with him at the press conference, I would have kissed him senseless on live television.

I could feel his family’s eyes on me, so I laughed to disguise my reaction to what he’d just said. “We’ll need to get you a new tie before the Cup of China, Yuri!” I laughed at the television. “That thing’s hideous.”

His mother smiled and nodded in agreement, but I could tell Mari hadn’t bought my ruse. She glared at me and shook her head, and then looked back at her brother on the screen. I couldn’t wait for him to come home, if only to rescue me from her.

* * *

He arrived after I’d retired for the evening. I heard him address his parents in the hallway. If I understood him correctly, he said he’d already eaten. He’d speak with them in the morning and was going to bed.

I put a hand to my heart when he knocked on my door.

“Come in!” Makka began to thump his tail and wriggled to the edge of the bed to greet him.

Yuri poked his head inside the room. “You’re still up?”

“I was reading.” I laid the book aside and adjusted the covers over my lap out of respect for his modesty. He closed the door and set down his backpack.

“Did you watch?” he asked, scratching Makka between the ears. He removed his jacket and sat down beside my hip. Makka reoriented himself so that his head rested on my feet. His tail beat like a metronome.

“You sounded very confident, just like we practiced.” I ran my finger down the length of his frightful tie. I wondered if he’d notice it missing from his wardrobe?

“Do you think I surprised them?”

“Well, you surprised _me_ , so I imagine you did. That was quite a speech.”

“You understood it?”

“Minako told me what you said. How is your head?”

His eyelashes fluttered as he smiled, and he looped his arms around my back.

“It’s fine. I’m tired,” he said, resting his full weight against me.

“You should sleep now. We can talk tomorrow.”

“May I stay with you tonight?” he yawned against my neck.

Twice I repeated his words to myself to be certain I hadn’t misunderstood, and then I put my arms around him as well.

“I’ll have to ask Makkachin,” I said. My voice came out in a strange wobble that I buried in his shoulder. “But I’m sure it’s all right.

 


	9. Chapter 9

What I liked best about our time in Hasetsu was when we did nothing at all.

After Yuri’s success in the block competitions, the weeks leading up to the Cup of China, a critical step on his road to the Grand Prix Final, were draining. We worked upwards of fifteen hours a day, between the ice and running and strength training, which left little time or energy for anything else. Yuri insisted on bathing in the onsen daily; afterwards, he would dress in loose clothing, eat, and in his exhausted and docile state was usually receptive to my care.

On this night, Yuri’s left shoulder and hip were marbled green from a recent fall. He lay gingerly on his right side to spare the bruises, a thin patterned cover pulled to his chest to ward off the cooling fall weather. His feet were exposed.

It was dark outside and quiet in the restaurant downstairs. There must not have been a sporting event televised tonight. I applied ointment to his blisters and checked his toes and ankles for swelling, and finding them adequate, massaged the arch of each foot with my thumbs. Yuri stretched and sighed pleasantly.

“Can I bring you anything?” I asked.

I barely caught the back-and-forth movement of his head, largely absorbed by the pillow. Once I’d finished, I pulled the blanket over his feet and removed his glasses. Wedging myself between his back and the wall, I lay down beside him. He’d slept in my room a handful of times since September, close enough that I could hear every breath, close enough to touch.

This was the first time we’d lain in his bed. His hair was wet from the shower. I couldn’t help myself and combed my fingers gently through it.

“You did wonderfully today,” I said.

“Mhm.”

“Are you agreeing with me for once or too tired to argue?”

“Where’s Makka?”

“In my room. I wasn’t sure if you’d want him crawling all over you in this state. Would you like me to get him?”

“Mhm.”

Repressing a sigh, I got back up. Makkachin lumbered into the room as soon as I’d opened the door an inch and situated himself in the negative space within Yuri’s arms.

“I think you like him better than you like me,” I sniffed, crawling back onto the bed.

“He doesn’t talk as much,” Yuri muttered into the curly top of Makka’s head.

“If you keep up this attitude, I’m going to have to call you Yurio.”

“Very funny.”

He drifted in and out of sleep. Though I had been awake as many hours, I wasn’t tired. I petted his hair for a while and eventually sat up to watch the stars, but the cloud cover was too thick and blotted them out.

In the dark, I explored the contents of his bookshelves: ID tags from various competitions, bronze medals and plaques and gold plastic figurines. In a box on the lowest shelf were VHS tapes, perhaps a record of his childhood or videos of his early performances. Did the Katsukis own a machine capable of playing them? I would try to remember to ask tomorrow.

Beside the box was wedged a stack of thick paper of various thicknesses and sizes, some with adhesive on the corners. Curious, I pulled out the stack and covered my mouth to keep from laughing aloud when I realized what I was holding.

His boast of a dozen posters hadn’t been a drunken exaggeration. Considering the size of his room, I’d imagined three, maybe four at the most. I hadn’t expected this many; they must have covered practically all of the available wall space.

There were images of me skating from the time I was sixteen. Mixed in with the skating shots was an absurd pose from a photo shoot that I’d agreed to do for a magazine, of me seated on a throne, taken when I was a year younger than Yuri was now. I’d felt ridiculous but it had paid well. He had a copy of an interview I’d given after becoming junior world champion; Makka was only a year old in the picture and I hadn’t yet cut off my hair.

I conjured an image of Yuri as a teenager, sitting in this room surrounded by pictures of me, of my face being the last thing he saw before he fell asleep at night. I was so touched I forgot to breathe for a moment.

The last poster was of me and Yakov. He had on his hat and coat and his signature scowl. I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling out loud at that one.

“What are you looking at?” Yuri mumbled from the bed.

I switched on his desk lamp and turned the last poster toward him. “I see now why you’ve never had a lover.”

His face became a mixture of anger and mortification. Makka whined as Yuri scrambled over him and tried to snatch the stack of posters from my grip, but I held them just out of reach above his head.

“Where did you find those? Give them back!”

I laughed and held them another inch higher. “Why are you embarrassed?”

“Because they’re posters of you!”

“So? I keep a picture of myself. In fact, it’s this one! You have good taste.”

“Viktor!”

I tried to cup his jaw. “It’s sweet, as though you’ve always belonged to me.”

He jerked away from my hand and swatted my arm, trying to bring the posters down. “It wasn’t like that!”

“You didn’t think of me when you were falling asleep?”

“I admired you,” Yuri said. “I wanted to be like you.”

“You didn’t find me attractive?”

“Of course I—!” His face had turned so red he looked positively feverish and he pivoted so his quaking back was toward me.

When I was eight years old, a boy in my class stole the hat under which I had painstakingly concealed my hair when we were outside, and he’d called me ugly. Like an old man. Find compassion, my mother had told me. I discovered spite instead and the very next day, rather than put on a larger hat or bring any punishment against the boy, I began to grow my hair out.

I never wore that hat again. Even so, I’ve never forgotten the initial feeling in my stomach, like I’d been kicked.

I laid the posters aside and hugged Yuri from behind. His body trembled with anger but he didn’t push me away.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” I said.

“I wish you hadn’t seen those.”

“You misunderstand. I’m flattered you thought so much of me. I only wish I had known you sooner.”

He sighed. “May I go back to bed, please?”

“Of course. I’m sorry for waking you. Lie down.”

He did. I turned off the light and took a step toward the door, intending to leave him for the night. I didn’t think he’d want me here just now, not after the way I’d behaved. But he lifted his head so his hair skimmed the pillow.

“Aren’t you staying?” he asked, peering at me over Makka’s ears.

My heart skipped and I swallowed. “If you want me.”

He hesitated; then, with a generous breath, pulled back the covers. I didn’t allow him time to reconsider, forgoing my night clothes for what I had on and climbing in with him. I rested a tentative hand at the curve of his hip and he settled back against me.

In a few days, we would pack for the trip to China. I was confident Yuri would do well, but if he didn’t, if I had been wrong about his chances, what then? Our arrangement hinged on the Grand Prix Final. If he failed to qualify, was I prepared to take off yet another season to work with him, or would he retire after all? I knew he was still thinking about it, the way he spoke in finalities. No mention of next season. In Yuri’s mind, his career was already over.

“You’re warm,” he said, his last words to me before he slept. It felt like hours before I followed him.

I dreamt of running through my hometown, over the bridges and along the river that winds through it. The gulls cried. The river was suddenly not a river any longer but the ocean in Hasetsu, the crying of the gulls Yuri’s laughter.

When morning interrupted, he was no longer in my arms. It was late, the room bright and the sun fully risen. I was alone in his bed, Makka gone too. I laid a hand on the indent in his pillow but there was no residual warmth—maybe he’d gone to the bathroom. I rubbed my eyes, stretching my arms above my head to restore feeling to my limbs, and listened to a warbler in the cherry tree outside.

A few minutes later, I held my breath when I heard footsteps approach the door, hoping they were his and not his mother’s. They shared a similar gait. I was pleased when Yuri came into the room—shyly, softly, head bowed and hair tousled from sleep. He’d pulled on a t-shirt and pants, creased from being folded.

“We overslept,” he said apologetically. To my disappointment, he didn’t approach the bed, but he closed the door behind him. His fingers played a silent melody on the hem of his shirt.

I trailed mine through a pool of sunlight on the bed sheets. “You needed the rest.”

“I took Makka outside. He’s downstairs eating.”

I smiled at his thoughtfulness. “Thank you. How are your feet?”

He looked down at them. “Sore.”

“We should take it easy today.”

Yuri shook his head. “There’s not much time left. I’m still not landing all my jumps.”

“You won’t land any if you overexert yourself. Come lie down with me.”

He glanced to a point on the wall above my head and bit his lip; though his mouth remained slack, his eyes were laughing.

“What is it?” I asked, craning my head to see what he was looking at, but the wall was bare.

“I was thinking how strange this would be if I still had your posters on my wall.”

I winked. “We could hang them back up and find out.”

Snorting in a way that indicated we would be doing no such thing, Yuri removed his glasses and cast his shirt and pants on the floor.

“Move over,” he said. He yawned and nuzzled into me, the knuckles of his right hand resting in the gap left between my shirt and pants, and was asleep again within seconds.

I was less calm about our arrangement but eager to remain in it. My stomach growled. We hadn’t eaten heavily at dinner last night and it was hours past our usual breakfast time, but nothing could have tempted me to leave his bed, not even Makka, who whined pitifully from the hallway for a quarter hour before he gave up and went somewhere else to nap.

This was the most intimate Yuri and I had ever been. It was not a show for the cameras or for his fans, not Yuri’s way of reaffirming his own sensuality before taking the ice. I had dreamed of this, for months imagined being allowed to hold him so closely. Maybe I would never have what I truly wanted, but this I would take: the sleepy scent of his hair, the way his face fit just so against my neck. Our legs crossed at the ankle. I clasped his hand within mine and closed my eyes.


	10. Chapter 10

As nervous as he gets in other areas of his life, Yuri is a relatively calm traveler. Maybe it's something to do with the regimented atmosphere of an airport. He waited quietly at the gate for our flight to Beijing, listening to something shrill on his headphones, and once we were seated, promptly leaned his head against the airplane window and went to sleep. Minako would take a later flight. I was glad Yuri would have a friend to cheer him on.

I'd been to China a handful of times over the years. I liked it there. The people were friendly, the food plentiful and exciting. Plus, I’d been looking forward to socializing with Yuri after all of our hard work.

However, I hadn’t anticipated the cold shoulder from Yakov. I’d hoped enough months had passed that his anger toward me would have subsided, but he brushed off my invitation to join Yuri and me for dinner so harshly, I was stunned. After all our years together! It had been my attempt at an apology and I was so upset, I drank more than I should have that evening, trying to show off for Yuri’s former Italian coach who’d challenged me on far more than my drinking skills.

I woke in my own bed the following morning and found the likely evidence of why on Instagram. I shouldn’t have drunk so much around Yuri, knowing how desperately I felt for him. I had apparently removed my shirt inside of a restaurant (hardly a surprise if you’ve seen me drinking with friends) and had my arms around his neck, trying for a kiss. God knows what I said. With any luck, it was in Russian and he hadn’t understood.

Yuri didn’t stir as I dressed in the dark and left the room.

Chris had arrived on a late flight from Switzerland and tracked me down in the hotel lobby on my way to breakfast.

“I can't believe you're sitting out the season and leaving me all alone!” he moaned, slipping an arm around my shoulders. Chris is one of the few people in the sport who makes me feel diminutive. His musky cologne was overly strong; I held my breath to keep from breathing too much of it.

“You appear to have survived.”

“Where is your stunning protégé this morning?” he asked.

“Still sleeping.”

“Tell him to get moving. I haven’t seen him in almost a year. I feel deprived.”

“Behave,” I said and escaped his arm.

“Ah.” He smiled and shoved me playfully. “So the rumors _are_ true.”

A gathering of people had formed a few feet away, doubtless trying to listen into our conversation. I touched his sleeve and indicated the breakfast buffet.

“Have you eaten?”

“We’re making this a tradition,” he said, striding through the doorway. “Do you think Yuri will join us this time?”

“I want him to sleep late.”

“Rough night?” Chris purred.

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I haven’t slept with him.” Not in the manner Chris assumed, anyway.

He made a disappointed clucking noise with his tongue and filled a plate to the edge with stuffed steamed buns and dumplings. “I adore the food here. What are you having? I shouldn’t eat all of these carbs but I’m going to.”

I took sausage and boiled eggs and a small bowl of congee, which I left plain.

“You look good,” Chris said. “More color in your face or something. Maybe I ought to visit Japan. Shall we sit over here?”

I kept my back to the restaurant. Chris occasionally looked up and waved at people, and a few times I could see a camera flash in my peripheral vision.

“Is this going to make him jealous?” Chris spoke with his mouth stuffed full. I took a deep sip of tea, holding back the spoon so it wouldn’t poke me in the eye, and shook my head.

“How has your season been?”

“You mean you haven’t kept tabs on me?” He stuck out his bottom lip. “I’m feeling good about it, but it would be better if you were still competing. I’m bored without you. When are you announcing your comeback?”

“I haven’t thought about it.”

“Now that I _don’t_ believe.”

I shrugged. “So don’t believe it. It’s the truth.”

“You are the most deliberate person I have ever met, or have you been too blinded by your affection?”

I rolled my eyes.

“You have!” Chris said.

“So what?”

“I think it’s marvellous! Someone has actually conquered Viktor Nikiforov. Why are you not sleeping together?”

With the edge of my fork, I cut a sausage link into pieces and inadvertently knocked one onto my lap. “How is that any of your business?” I asked, scrambling to brush it away before it left a stain.

He burst out laughing and wiped his eyes. “This is incredible. I had no idea you were afraid of anything. Are you worried that he doesn’t reciprocate or something? Viktor, I read somewhere what he said about you in a press conference. This is not one-sided.”

“Did I say that? Yuri has a lot to think about right now. The last thing he needs is me throwing myself at him.” I rubbed my forehead and tried not to think of the Instagram photo. “Besides,” I muttered, “I tried that approach already. It didn’t work.”

“I saw the picture of you from two last night.”

“Ugh, I wish Phichit hadn’t posted that.”

Chris stuffed an entire bun in his mouth and grinned. “You know I’d bend over for you this second, if you asked.”

“You never change, do you.” I sighed. “Yuri knows I care for him. I know he cares for me, in his way. I’m not worried about the rest.”

“You’re in love with him.” Chris’s eyes a little wider than usual.

I supposed I was. I smiled against the back of my hand.

“How is your family?” I asked.

We continued to eat and chat until his phone rang.

“Damn. It’s Josef,” he said, making a face. “I have to go.”

“Early practice?”

“Mmm.” He gathered his coat and room key. “See you in a few hours. I’m going to do you a favor and pretend this breakfast never happened.”

“How is that a favor?” I asked, arching an eyebrow.

Chris stood titan-like over me and slipped on his sunglasses. “Bring him something from the buffet when you go up. He’ll like that. It’s romantic.”

He left me alone at the table to finish my meal, though I could hear his booming voice as he went, the exuberant sounds of his fans as he stopped for pictures. And when I had finished eating, I filled an extra plate as he’d suggested.

* * *

I could tell from the way he was breathing that Yuri was awake, though he was still in bed, the stark white comforter pulled over his entire body so just the top of his head stuck out. I set his breakfast on the bleached wood table along the wall and brewed a cup of espresso, pulling out one of the beige chairs and sitting down to drink. I took out my phone on the pretense of checking my messages, something I regularly did in the morning, but today I watched him over the top of it.

Our room had a view of the surrounding buildings. Whether he was looking at them or something else, I didn't know. He sighed and drew his knees closer to his chest.

“Yuri? There's food if you're hungry.”

He didn't respond. I pursed my lips and, leaving my coffee to cool, walked between the two beds. I sat down on mine so I also faced the window.

“How’s your head this morning?” he asked, more like a croak, his voice thickened by sleep. I had a moment's chuckle thinking of the frog at the center of the onsen.

“My head is fine. Why do you ask?”

He turned his head so I could see the crest of his ear but not his eyes. “You drank a lot last night.”

“You should take it as a compliment. I was having a good time.”

“I'll be sure to tell Phichit.”

He sounded a bit irritated, his syllables sharp, so I kept the knowledge of what I had seen on Instagram to myself for now. He would find out soon enough.

“Would you like to see the city today?” I asked. The Yuri-shaped lump on the bed shrugged. “I could draw you a bath. Or the hotel has a spa. Have you ever had a facial? I find them overpriced but I enjoy the experience.”

“Not right now.”

“Then why don't we go up to the pool? It'll help you relax.”

“I want to stay here.”

“In bed?” He didn't answer so I took off my jacket. “Okay, move over.”

He didn't do that either. I lifted the blankets and fit myself around him.

“You smell different,” he said.

I smelled like Chris’s noxious cologne. “Oh, there … there was a heavily perfumed gentleman at breakfast.”

He made a sound as though he were exasperated, but a moment later shifted his shoulders and hips so our bodies aligned, and felt for my hand, which he held over his side.

“What’s wrong?” I asked the back of his head. “Are you nervous about disappointing me or something?”

His hand went limp inside of mine like a dead fish. I put my arm fully around him and hugged him to my chest.

“What suit should I wear today? The black one?”

“Gray,” he murmured.

“Gray it is,” I said against his hair. “Are you sure you don’t want to eat? The food was quite good. Or we could go down together if you want something else.”

“In a while.”

“Would you prefer that I leave you alone?”

He shook his head and burrowed backwards into me in response, so there was no space left between us, and though it meant I could not be modest about the effect he had on me, I held him more tightly. He trembled against me but not out of desire. It was a miserable trembling throughout his entire body.

“Won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” I ran my hands over his arms. “Yuri?”

He never answered. At some point I must have fallen asleep, because I woke alone in his bed to the sound of the shower running, the plate I’d brought for him empty on the table.

The water shut off and Yuri puttered around the room getting ready. I heard a gurgling noise, the whine of steam escaping. He shook me by the shoulder.

“Your coffee was cold. I made you a new cup.”

I thought he might get back into bed with me, and rolled drowsily over to smile at him, but he had put his suitcase on my bed and pulled out his costumes. He laid mine, the one from his short program, reverently on the rumpled sheets.

“Would you like me to style your hair?” I asked, and not taking his eyes from the costume, he nodded.

* * *

Chris’s words knocked around in my head as we got ready ( _“You’re in love with him.”_ ), as I combed Yuri’s hair ( _“You’re in love with him.”_ ), as I held out the costume and slowly zipped it from the small of his back to his neck ( _“You’re in love with him.”)_. With my hands at his waist, I met his eyes in the mirror.

“You are a vision. Are you ready?”

Yuri nodded once, firmly, the way he often did before he took to the ice. I smiled, though my stomach rolled as though I were on a ship.

“Good.” I briefly pressed my cheek to his and dropped my hands.

At the arena, Chris acted so flirtatiously toward Yuri, shamelessly groping him when they reunited, I thought Yuri might actually have an aneurysm, but the conversation turned toward me and my future career intentions. As he’d promised, Chris pretended we hadn’t had breakfast a few hours ago. He allowed me my secrets, and I accepted with silent gratitude.

When it was Yuri’s turn to take the ice, Chris caught my eye and winked. I think I was more nervous than Yuri but determined not to show it. With the boards between us, I laid my gloved hand on top of his, bare and lovely.

“The time to seduce me by picturing katsudon is over. You can do it by just being yourself.” I smiled indulgently at him, though my stomach felt like it had dropped a thousand feet through the air. I stroked the back of his hand. “You’ve figured that out by now, haven’t you?”

I looked between his eyes, worried I’d startled him as I had in April, that he would be repulsed by my declaration, but there was no fear in his eyes. He didn't push me away. He threaded his fingers through mine, forcibly bringing our foreheads together. The crowd screamed in response.

“Watch me, Viktor,” he said. I shivered at the wash of his breath over my lips. “Don’t take your eyes off me.”

* * *

Yuri surprised everyone in Beijing with a flawless short program—most of all himself. In addition to a new personal best, he was in first place going into the long programs. He didn’t appear to register his success at first, inexplicably subdued as we sat side-by-side in the kiss and cry and did neither.

Minako took us out to celebrate that night and I was more careful with my alcohol consumption. Yuri drank nothing.

For the next several hours, his phone pinged with new messages from his family, from former rink mates. His claim of having few friends seemed unreliable. Though he smiled at the initial wave of messages, by the time we returned to the hotel, he’d muted his phone. I drew the curtains and put him to bed, and got reluctantly into my own. He lay very still. I wasn’t sure if he was asleep, but he was resting.

Saturday morning, twelve hours before his long program, he trailed me down to breakfast. His eyes were puffy behind his glasses and he yawned through the buffet line and through his meal, which seemed to reinvigorate him. He tore off a piece of a bun and offered it to me. I ate willingly from his hand.

At the morning practice, however, I could see how tired he was. Now that he’d been awake for a couple hours, dark shadows ringed his eyes and he laughed at inappropriate moments, such as when he failed to land a double axel.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” I suggested once he’d finished and ushered him out under my arm. “We can rest.”

“I’m fine!”

“Well, I didn’t sleep well last night,” I lied. “You can keep me company.”

Once we were in the room, I closed the curtains and confiscated his phone. I gave him my silk eye mask and urged him to lie down. Rather than lie beside him as usual, I decided it was best to prevent an attempted escape and rested my head on his chest. His heart fluttered like wings.

The nap refreshed me, but it had had a magnifying effect on Yuri’s nerves. As we paced the hallway in the stadium, waiting for the free programs to begin, I chatted to him freely, hoping it would relax him if I kept speaking, but he cringed the more I spoke. No jumps during warm-up, I cautioned. He fell trying to land one anyway.

“It happens to all of us!” I assured him, but no matter what I said, how cheerfully I said it, careful not to allow any worry to steal into my face, Yuri’s eyes broadcasted panic. He looked ready to vomit, his color wrong, and wasn’t speaking anymore.

I remembered what Takeshi had said months ago about Yuri shutting down, about needing to keep him calm, and took him as far as the stairs would go, to the parking garage beneath the stadium where we could be alone.

* * *

We waited in the dark, inhaling a foul potpourri of asphalt and rubber. Overhead, the crowd roared with applause at the end of each program and the commentators’ voices echoed dully off of the garage’s concrete walls. I covered his ears so he couldn’t listen but he looked anguished. I’d been nervous before, but not like this. Never like _this_. I’d never seen an adult skater in Yuri’s condition. It had been my duty, my responsibility to instill confidence in him and I obviously hadn’t prevailed by any measure.

Maybe I could shock him out of his misery, the way you startle someone to cure the hiccups. No matter how we try to hide it behind pride, a skater’s heart is as fragile as glass. Yuri was too hard on himself, so I told him something I thought would help:

“If you mess up and don’t make the podium, I’ll take responsibility and resign as your coach.”

He went very still for a few seconds. I thought he might yell; I had expected him to yell, to be fired up by my words, as I would have been if Yakov had threatened to walk out on me! But he didn’t yell, nor did he move. His dark eyes went liquid and spilled over without blinking.

“Why would you say something like that, like you’re trying to test me?” He began to sob.

Oh, my god, I was such an asshole. “I—I’m sorry, Yuri.” I approached him slowly. “I wasn’t being serious!”

“I’m used to being blamed for my own mistakes, but now I’m anxious because they’ll be a reflection on _you_! I’ve been wondering if you secretly wanted to quit!”

“Of course I don’t,” I said, smiling, hoping a soothing tone would reassure him, but he only yelled in response.

“I know!”

I was utterly confused. Yuri shook from head to toe, his back straight and arms locked at his sides, his head down. His fists were so tightly clenched, his fingers had lost color, and he made piteous sounds in his throat.

I never know what to do when people cry in front of me. It’s one of the most awkward situations I can think of. Which is why, rather than attempt to comfort him like a normal person might have, I offered to kiss him instead.

“No!” he shouted. “Just have more faith in me than I do that I’m going to win! You don’t have to say anything. Just stay close to me, Viktor. Please.”

Our first year together was a learning experience for both of us. I’m not proud of a lot of things I did and said, but what I regret the most is making him cry in that parking garage, thinking I would abandon him.

Half a year ago, a hand on his back had been enough to comfort him on a podium. Could it really be that simple now? Had I been exacerbating his anxiety by trying to act the way I thought a coach should? I longed to apologize further but fit my teeth together and merely nodded.

He nodded in return and allowed me to dry his face. Once I had finished, I embraced him as I should have done in the first place and said nothing.

I didn’t say a word as we climbed the stairs, as we passed fellow competitors in the hallway, as we approached the ice. I didn’t wish him good luck or offer a platitude. I didn’t tell him how beautiful he looked. When I leaned to catch his tissue before it fell onto the ice, he pressed a fingertip to the crown of my head.

The crowd cheered his name. Yuri skated away from me toward the center of the ice.

The opening notes for his long program began to play. Strangely, he smiled. He skated well in spite of his exhaustion, in spite of our fight—I prayed he wouldn’t hold it against me. Rather than catalog his mistakes, as I normally would have, I cheered for him. Yuri’s gift is his ability to stir a crowd, and as he had almost a year ago in a hotel banquet room, he captivated everyone watching.

His quad Salchow was perfect, and though he touched down on the triple axel and over-rotated his first jump combination, he landed the triple lutz and triple toeloop that followed. I watched with my mouth open.

His step sequence in the second half was exquisite, fueled by something deep inside. For someone so closed off in life, he gave every bit of himself on that ice in China, as if his heart was spilled open upon it.

I prepared for his final jump, a quadruple toe loop we had practiced over and over to exhaustion. I knew he could land it, that he _would_ land it. As he approached the takeoff, I held my breath.

Around and above me, the crowd shot to their feet. I couldn’t believe what I’d just seen. Yuri had changed the final jump to a flip—my flip. The one considered my signature! He’d fallen afterwards, but he’d managed enough rotations.

He came to a stop as the music did and extended a hand toward me.

Yuri might not be able to express himself well with words, but I knew this performance, _this performance,_ had been an answer to what I’d said to him yesterday, the acceptance of my silent apology in the garage, and I loved him for it.

I dropped my face into my hands to catch my breath, and when I saw him still looking at me, I began to run toward the kiss and cry. He skated to me with his arms out, his smile brilliant.

“Viktor! I did great, right?”

I heard no voice but his as I waited for him to reach me. _You don’t have to say anything_ , he’d said, so I didn’t. I leapt into his arms and kissed him, the force of it knocking both of us onto the ice. I kept a gloved hand behind his head to cradle it from the impact.

He blinked up at me, startled but pleased.

“That was the only way I could think to surprise you as much as you’ve surprised me,” I said, and he smiled up at me as I had never seen him smile at anyone.

“Well, it worked,” he said and I kissed him again for good measure.

* * *

Afterwards, I told reporters that Yuri would definitely win gold at the Rostelecom Cup in Moscow and lavished his cheek with affection for the camera, drunk on my giddiness. Nothing in the world could’ve spoiled this day for me now!

Except that Yuri confronted me about it as soon as we’d returned to our hotel.

“Viktor … why did you kiss me?” he asked, his tone neutral. I couldn’t tell if he was upset and felt my throat began to close.

“I told you, I wanted to surprise you.”

His face locked up, like a glitch on a phone screen. “Is that all it was?”

“What?”

“A way to surprise your fans.”

I felt myself darken. “You think my feelings for you are so shallow?”

He rubbed his eyes and unzipped his jacket, leaving it on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. I’m very tired. I’m going to shower, then we can get dinner. Okay?”

The jacket fell when he closed the bathroom door.

I left it on the floor and sat on the bed closest to the window, the one Yuri had slept in last night. I supposed it probably looked odd to everyone else, a coach and a skater sharing a room, but we were not a typical pair, and beyond my selfishness, I hadn’t thought it was a good idea for him to be alone. Yuri hadn’t said anything when I’d requested a single room or when we’d received one packet at check-in, and his was the only opinion that mattered.

My throat tightened further when the shower switched off. I should’ve gone for a walk. I should’ve gotten out of the room, but there was no escaping him now. He came to me wrapped in a towel and sat down. The mattress dipped underneath his weight. He rested his hands on his knees and rounded his back like a cat, leaning forward over his thighs. His skin was flushed and damp from the hot water. I hadn’t yet taken off my coat.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked cautiously.

He nodded once. “Yes.”

“If you don’t feel up to going out, we can have food sent up.”

“We can go out. I’d like to see more of the city now.”

“Should we call Phichit?”

“Maybe later. I’m sure he’s celebrating.”

“Surely he would want to celebrate with you.”

“Well, maybe I want to celebrate with _you_.” Yuri sighed. “It might not be a gold medal, but for me it’s huge. I wouldn’t have gotten here without you, Viktor.”

I glanced to him. “Does this mean you’re not angry with me?”

“I’m not angry. I’m …” He took a deep breath and let it out.

“What? What are you thinking?”

He squeezed his eyes closed. “I’m confused.”

“About what?”

“About what you _want_ from me! Sometimes I think I know, but I’m never certain. Sometimes I’m positive you’re going to kiss me and then you don’t. We sleep together but you don’t touch me.”

“I—I didn’t know you wanted me to!”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to,” he said with nervous laughter. “I don’t know what you would see in me. I mean, you kept trying to kiss me the other night when you were drunk, but I assumed it was the alcohol.”

“Yuri, I’ve wanted to kiss you almost since the moment we met, but I didn’t think you wanted that.”

“I know I’ve pushed you away,” Yuri continued, as though I hadn’t spoken. “I’m sorry. I can’t promise it won’t happen again, but I’ll try not to do it anymore.”

I put a hand on his leg. “I’m sorry if I’ve made you feel unwanted.”

“You haven’t.” Yuri’s fingers curled like petals into his towel; the tension faded from his knuckles and his posture softened. “But thank you.”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “So … are you saying it would be all right if I kiss you sometime?”

“Yes.”

“I want to be clear: I don’t want to kiss anyone else. Just you.”

With a look of satisfaction, he nodded sharply and stood up. “Good. I should get dressed. I’m starving.”

He selected a dark shirt and the pants he would likely fly home in. I remained where I sat, speechless, as he hopped on one foot to pull his pants on. And when he was dressed, he planted a knee on the mattress and took my face in both hands. He’d combed the hair back from his face but had on his glasses. I caught my own shocked reflection in the lenses as he leaned down and pressed his lips to mine.

The kiss was long and still. He didn’t open his mouth but slid both hands to the back of my head. I dizzily kissed back with the same chaste passion, like children stealing first kisses in the schoolyard.

And then it was not so chaste. He laid me on my back and threaded both hands in my hair. I stroked my tongue against his and moaned as he rocked against me. I whispered his name.

His stomach made an offensive noise and he laughed into my mouth.

“Hot pot again?” he said, pulling back. I blinked open my eyes. “Or do you have something else in mind?”

I had _several_ things in mind but none of them related to food. I wanted to stay in bed with him until the banquet tomorrow. I wanted to put my mouth on every part of him. He knelt beside me chewing his lip, awaiting my answer.

“Whatever you want,” I said, hoping what he wanted was to kiss me again, but he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Great! Maybe I’ll call Phichit and Minako after all, see if they want to join us.”

I don’t know how it was possible, but I was somehow more confused now that Yuri kissed me than I had been before. How did he change gears so quickly? I needed a moment before I could stand without embarrassing myself—thank goodness for the long coat—but he was already up and about the room, searching for his wallet and room key, chatting on his phone.

Had he expected me to react differently to his advances? Maybe he’d wanted me to take control instead of allowing him to set the pace. Maybe he wasn’t really attracted to me. Or did he think that I was a poor kisser? I’d never had any complaints but it had been a while.

“Okay, Minako already ate but Phichit will meet us there,” Yuri said. “He’s out taking pictures but he said he’s getting hungry. Minako said she’d have a drink with us when we’re back at the hotel. I have to remember to call her. I should wear a coat. It got cold last night. Okay, let’s go. Viktor! Viktor, are you coming?”

  
illustration by Ludicrouslyidiotic

* * *

I read in an airline magazine that the Himalayas have been developing for fifty million years. Imagine requiring that much time for two landmasses to come together! By comparison, Yuri and I were practically sprinting.

Following a quiet dinner with Phichit and a round of drinks in the hotel bar, Yuri crawled into my bed. He kissed me for a while and I touched him delicately everywhere, but the exhaustion caught up with him at last and he fell asleep with our mouths touching. I covered him to his shoulders and kissed him until I slept.

In the morning, as the sun came up, we drifted in and out of consciousness. He was not unaffected by our proximity, as I’d feared. In the back of his throat, he made soft, pleading whimpers, so quiet he might not have been aware of them. I kissed his slack mouth, intending only to quiet him, but it roused him enough to kiss back—gently, sweetly, until the alarm went off.

He silenced it and, knotting a hand into my hair, pulled my face closer to his and my body closer to his. I drew him fully against me. By the time the alarm rang again, we were too lost in one another to notice or to care. He had rolled on top and was using elements of his _eros_ routine to devastate me in the best way possible.

I called down for tea and breakfast to be delivered to the room and we enjoyed a private meal at the table beside the window. I showered alone and packed for our flight tomorrow, since there would be a banquet that night and I had learned from experience never to pack while hungover. I checked under the bed for anything we might have mislaid and had the closet open when he got out of the shower. He boxed me in against the wall with his arms and kissed me for a few minutes. He’d used my shampoo, intended for silver hair; I preferred the fragrance on him.

* * *

Though Yuri abstained, I got gloriously drunk at the small closing banquet and begged him onto the dance floor. “Does this bring back memories?” I said into his ear.

“I think it’s time for bed,” he said, snickering, and yes, _yes_ , bed with Yuri Katsuki is always a good idea.


	11. Chapter 11

We were seated in coach on the return flight to Japan. Yuri had been determined to travel humbly and accept the provided tickets, despite my offer to pay for a seat upgrade, but I insisted on champagne for two.

He had no excuse now that the competition was over and he was returning home a silver medalist. A drink would help him relax. He fell asleep on my shoulder before it arrived, his hat askew, face mask bunched inelegantly around his chin. I kissed his temple and drank both glasses.

“To your success, my love,” I said, drowned out by the engines.

A flight attendant offered him a pillow. I accepted a blanket, spreading it across our laps, but kept his head where it rested on my shoulder. His hair was soft against my cheek, hand twined loosely in mine. I brought it to my lips, to the apparent delight of the woman seated across from us.

Upon our arrival in Fukuoka, Yuri was groggy, forgetting his bag under the seat—the woman had called after him as we deplaned—and allowed me to guide him through the airport with an arm around his back. We shared something to eat on the train home, and after greeting his parents, took our bags upstairs. Tomorrow we would return to our routine, but there were still a few hours of daylight left to enjoy.

We spent them in his room with the curtain thrown wide and the door locked. Makka had insisted on being with us, continually inserting himself between our bodies, but it only made Yuri laugh.

I lose time when he kisses me, even now. It was daylight when I closed my eyes and night when I again became aware of myself: my hands underneath his shirt, lips numb, screaming hunger in my stomach. He must’ve been hungry as well.

“I don’t want to stop,” I whispered, “but you must eat something.”

His laughter was a puff of air against my cheek. “Okay, coach.”

“Will you be having your favorite?”

He pulled away far enough to look me in the eye. “Are you giving me permission?”

I touched his face, drawing my thumb across the seam of his mouth. “I think you’ve earned it.”

Grinning with all of his teeth, he kissed me hard, making a smacking noise with his lips. “Race you downstairs,” he said and bounded out the door without waiting for me, Makka at his heels.

I stared bewildered at the ceiling for a few seconds and dissolved into laughter. So I was second to a pork cutlet bowl. Okay. Yuri had been denied them for so long, could I really blame him?

It was a pleasure to watch their reunion. His eyes fluttered shut as his lips closed around the first bite, and he moaned the way he had moaned for me in the hotel that morning.

“Mari says there are pictures of you two all over the internet!” Yuri’s mother cooed. She sat along the shortest edge of the table with her chin in her hands. “I hope that means you won’t be leaving us any time soon, Vicchan. You’re good for business and you make my Yuri happy.”

“I like it here,” I said, watching Yuri fondly. “I wouldn’t mind staying.”

Mari frowned. “You’re not making a comeback next year?”

Yuri caught my eyes over the rim of his bowl.

“I haven’t decided,” I said.

“Well, you can’t do both,” Mari said.

“It would be a challenge,” I agreed. She crossed her arms and scowled but didn’t say any more.

* * *

I would like to tell you that Yuri and I merged our bedrooms that evening, that I spent every following night in his arms, that we never had another disagreement, that Makka never had to choose which bedroom to sleep in, but that wouldn't be the truth. Like continents, it was a slow drift. Besides, the Rostelecom Cup was in two weeks and we had work to do.

But when we weren’t practicing, we were together, in his room or in mine, in the hot spring or assisting his parents; and the times I fell asleep alone, I didn't fail to kiss him goodnight first. His bed was too narrow to comfortably sleep two, and while mine could accommodate both of us and the dog, sometimes he preferred his space. There was also the fact that we were living in his family’s home. They were gracious, and I did not wish to test their limits.

Mornings, though—mornings were when he came to me, crawling into my bed as he’d done in Beijing. I sleep better when he’s near. And maybe it meant we arrived to practice a few minutes later than I’d intended, but something had softened in me and ignited within him. _Eros_ had followed him off the ice and I couldn’t wait for him to astound Russia.

* * *

The moment the plane touched down in Moscow, I swear my heart beat at twice its normal rate. I wanted to show Yuri everything! We were only seven hundred kilometers or so from the coast. It wouldn’t take long to get home. I could show him my apartment, where I grew up, my home rink, introduce him to my friends. We could take the week to explore the city. It had been a long time since I played tourist, but there wasn’t time before the competition.

“Yuri?” I asked. We waited around the crowded airport carousel for our luggage. “How would you feel about extending our trip a few days?”

He pulled down his face mask. “Sure. Why?”

“I thought we could take the train to St. Petersburg, stay in my apartment for a few nights. We could go to the Hermitage—do you enjoy art? You could spend years in there and not see everything. Or we could take a tour! Do you like tours?”

Yuri raised an eyebrow. “How much coffee did you drink on the plane?”

I sighed through a smile. “I’ll arrange it when we get to the hotel. There’s one of the bags. No, I’ll get it. I don’t want you to strain your back. Oh, there’s the other.”

We rode to the hotel, where I’d cautiously booked a double hotel room with two tiny beds, rather than the single large bed I would have preferred. “What hideous carpet!” I said and flopped down on the first. “Ugh, we can’t both fit in one of these.”

“You’ll survive for a few nights,” Yuri said, hanging up his coat.

“My plans for you will have to wait until we’re at my apartment.”

“King-sized bed?”

“Naturally. Come here.”

He locked the door and lay down on top of me. “Is this going to be difficult for you?”

“You weigh a considerable amount but the mattress isn’t bad.”

He exhaled a sigh against my neck and I sobered, trailing my hands down his back.

“I imagine it will be strange not to compete,” I said. “They’ve supported me here for twenty years.”

“Do you think Chris is right? That people think I stole you?”

“You stole my _heart_. As your coach, I went willingly. Don’t worry what people think.”

He kissed beneath my ear. “If I make the podium, we’ll have to practice the exhibition skate once we get home. Have you thought of it?”

“Are you accusing me of forgetting?” I squeezed him with both arms. In fact, I had forgotten. I needed to email my composer about the music; it ought to be done by now. I didn’t know how I would get to Hisako’s to pick up the costume without Yuri finding out about it. Maybe I could enlist his mother’s help.

“We should take out your suit so it doesn’t wrinkle,” he murmured.

“In a while.” My eyes felt heavy. It was already night in Hasetsu. Unable to resist the temptation, I let them close. “I can’t wait to take you running on my favorite bridge.”

I felt the impression of his smile against my neck.

* * *

When Yuri kissed me for the first time, I knew he returned my affection, but it was not until Moscow that I knew with absolute certainty that he loved me as I loved him.

He’d completed his short program, surpassing his personal best and moving into first place. I was so overcome I dropped to my knees to kiss his skate. We waved good luck to Yurio, who skated next (a gorgeous performance), and when no one was watching us any longer, I said into Yuri’s ear, “I cannot wait to get you alone later.”

He blushed and shivered; I was not disappointed.

Jean-Jacques LeRoy from Canada skated last and beat Yuri’s score by a few points, knocking him down to second, but Yuri would have no problems qualifying for the final if he skated his long program the way he’d skated today.

We were speaking with reporters when Yuri’s phone rang—his sister. He stepped away to take it. I assumed she’d called to congratulate him and was surprised when he called my name.

“Viktor! You have to go back to Japan tonight. I’ll face the free skate tomorrow on my own.”

“What are you talking about?” I said.

“Makka choked on something. They’ve taken him to a veterinarian, but they aren’t sure if …”

Before I’d ever asked my mother to let me figure skate, I asked for a dog. It was impossible to keep one with her job and our tiny apartment, but try explaining that to a five-year-old child. I’d endured merciless teasing at school and uncertainty from doctors; I wanted a dog’s unconditional love more than anything.

Makka had been a surprise from my mother when I turned sixteen. I think she’d hoped I might come home more often with a dog waiting for me, but at that point I had my eye on the senior division. He’d lived with her until I bought my apartment—the one I still own—and while he’d spent a good part of the year in other people’s care, he’d been the one unalterable part of my life.

Yuri swallowed and made a determined face. “We’ll get you a flight immediately.”

My vision had gone soft. I held my eyes wide to keep them dry. I wanted nothing more than to be with Makkachin, but I was thousands of kilometers away. It was best to stay where I was, to coach Yuri tomorrow, and to fly home as planned. We would take our trip to the coast another year.

“I can’t just leave you in Russia!” I said.

“But you _have_ to go back!”

“I said, I can’t!”

Yuri is strong for others, in ways he is not strong for himself. He pressed his palm to my cheek.

“Viktor,” he said quietly. “ _Viktor_ , look at me. Go home.”

* * *

Following a maddening phone call to Aeroflot’s customer service, I was too flustered to pack. Yuri did it for me and laid my traveling documents with my gloves and scarf on the end of the second bed. He sat beside me.

“I would go with you, if …”

“No.” I kissed each of his fingers. “You’ve worked too hard for this. Are you sure you’re comfortable working with Yakov for a day?”

“I’ll be fine. Viktor … If I don’t make it onto the podium, I want you to know how much this has meant to me.”

“You’re talking like it’s over. Don’t think like that.”

“What time's your flight?”

“I don’t remember. They’re sending a car shortly.” I twisted my hands together and dropped my face into them. “What if he’s not okay?”

“Don’t think like that.” He laid his head on my shoulder. I held him until the concierge rang to say the car had arrived.

He went with me down to the lobby, giving me a final kiss in the elevator before the doors opened. It was the middle of the night; there were few people around, just one woman behind the desk and a bellhop. At the far end of the lobby, a man was sweeping the floors. The hotel was so quiet, I could hear the swish of the bristles. A driver waited for me outside the door in the snow.

“You have your passport?” Yuri asked. “I entered Mari’s number into your phone. I’ll send her your flight information.”

We said our goodbyes. It was a wretched ride to Sheremetyevo.

* * *

I’d booked the first available flight out of Moscow, an overnight to Tokyo with a three-hour layover before my connecting flight to Fukuoka. My mind ran wild with terrible possibilities. What if I was delayed? What if Makka died before I’d even landed in Japan? I called Mari for an update as soon as I had service. Makka was stable, thank god. The hospital was keeping him overnight for observation. My terror subdued and I managed a few minutes of sleep on the eighty-minute train ride to Hasetsu. Though I knew he’d be resting, I sent Yuri a message to say good luck.

Mari had sent me the address of the animal hospital that was tending to Makka, a kilometer away from the train station. She would meet me there. I ran as fast as I could with my suitcase behind me. The hospital’s front door was locked. I pounded with a fist until a technician came to unlock it. She didn’t speak English, but I showed her a picture of Makka and she waved me inside. Thankfully, Mari arrived a few minutes later, out of breath, her two-tone hair free, and was able to translate.

To keep him calm, Makka had been sedated while they removed the obstruction from his throat. He’d bitten his tongue, which would take several days to heal, but aside from being sore and having to eat his meals as a liquid for a week, there was no lasting damage, no broken ribs from the attempt to clear his throat.

“Can I take him home?” I asked. Mari spoke to the technician for a minute, and then turned to me and smiled.

“She says they’re fond of him. He’s very friendly. She’s going to get him for you, and then there is some paperwork you need to complete.”

“Thank you very much for bringing him here,” I said.

“I’m sorry you had to fly all the way back for this. Yuri must be a wreck.”

“Actually, he is the reason I’m here. I was going to stay in Moscow but he insisted I come home. To _Japan_ ,” I added, in case it hadn’t been obvious.

Her eyes became a little softer.

From the back, I heard excited panting and four determined paws. Makka scurried like a puppy down the short corridor to the waiting room. I knelt down and he greeted me with a persistent whine, standing on his back legs and planting a foot on either of my shoulders. He thoroughly sniffed my mouth and ears and hair before licking me.

“Well, hello to you too, Makkachin,” I laughed, closing my eyes just in time to avoid his tongue. “I heard you were very naughty. Yuri and I were so worried, but he sent me home to be with you. I’m so glad you’re okay. I’m sorry you had to be here without me. Are you ready to go home? Yes? Okay.”

I kissed his wet nose and with a pat to his head, stood up. Mari and the technician were both watching me with soppy expressions.

Shortly after, Yuri called to ask how Makka was doing. I was in the midst of filling out paperwork with Mari’s assistance.

“He’s going to be fine,” I said, stepping outside for privacy. Makka panted a halo of fog on the other side of the glass. “We’re taking him home in a few minutes. How are you?”

“Dizzy,” he said.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“Some.” He chuckled. “I don’t like the mattress.”

“Lie down for a while longer. Call for food.”

“I’m going down to the buffet in a few minutes and then I’m meeting Yakov for the public practice.”

“I’m sorry I’m not with you,” I said. “If I had known he’d be okay …”

“Don’t apologize. I would’ve given anything to be with Vicchan before he died.”

I smiled at the name. “I don’t know if they’ll broadcast the event here. I’ll try to find a stream and watch you.”

“Check with Minako,” he chuckled. “She’s good at finding them.”

“I will. Please call if you need anything.”

“You too. You know, if something happens.”

“I promise. I’ll see you when you get home.”

He said goodbye to me in Russian and disconnected, and for a long time I stared at the phone in my hand and thought, I am the luckiest man alive.

* * *

I rested for a while, but the sunlight made it difficult, and I’d set my alarm to give Makka his pain medication anyway. Once I was awake there was no point in trying to go back to sleep again. It was best to put in a full day so tomorrow wouldn't be as difficult. I would never get used to changing time zones.

The weather had turned cold, the way the weather had been when I first arrived in Hasetsu. It was easy to breathe, not as frigid as it had been in Moscow but a welcome reprieve from the sweltering summer heat. I put on my coat and we went for a walk.

Makka was more subdued than usual; his tail drooped as we went along. I supposed that he missed Yuri too. A few stitches couldn't stop him barking at the gulls perched on the bridge when we crossed it. I posted a video of him to Instagram, which Yuri’s friend Phichit liked within seconds—truly a master of social media.

We walked for an hour along the beach, along the shoreline where the water washed gray waves onto the sand, then wandered back through town. I picked up noodles for lunch and took photographs of the tiled rooftops, of colorful shop doors and fantastically cluttered displays. I would miss it here when I moved back home after the season.

 _If_ I moved back home. If I moved back to Russia.

Since we were close by and didn’t have to invent an excuse, since Yuri was out of town, we stopped into Hisako’s studio to check the progress of his costume for the Grand Prix Final exhibition. I left Makka on her doorstep.

“The pants are finished. I had him try them on during his last fitting,” she said, waving me through her living area, filled with a raspberry light from the red window coverings. “I told him it was an alternate color option.”

Clever. “And the jacket?”

She took me in the back where the jacket hung in a row of garments in various stages of completion. Taking it from its hanger, she slipped it onto a mannequin and turned it around so I could see. “I did what I could. It would be best if I could tailor it to his body.”

“He's not in the country.” I stood back to admire her work. “It looks incredible.”

“I took a few liberties with the design: silver buttons instead of brass, and I used the same overlay fabric for the upper torso that is on the other jacket I made for him.”

“It’s well done. Thank you. It will look perfect with mine.”

Though she didn’t smile, her eyes were pleased, crinkling at the corners. “Will yours need alterations?”

“No, it…” I twisted my mouth, remembering Yuri’s comment about my weight earlier in the summer, the number of katsudon bowls I had consumed. It was possible my figure had changed slightly. “Actually, you’re right. I haven’t worn it in many months. How soon can I bring it by?”

“Come back in an hour. I'm finishing up with something and then I can make time for you.”

* * *

Once I’d made the trip home and back to her studio, Hisako ordered me to stand very still on the carpeted platform while she stuck me with pins. Makka, who had come with me inside the apartment this time, watched my torture from a comfortable patch of sunlight on the floor where he was licking a biscuit she’d given him.

She would let out the pants a half an inch, so I could fasten them more comfortably. First my hair had begun to thin, and now I was letting myself go. Would Yuri even want me after this?

(Not an hour later, he sent me a photograph of the hotel’s breakfast spread he’d taken that morning, and I didn’t worry so much.)

Makka and I spent the rest of the day at home with Yuri’s family. His mother and I figured out how to stream Yuri’s laptop to the television downstairs, so we were able to watch his full program together on a full-sized screen. I remained quiet, biting back my criticism of his performance. It was partly my fault why Yuri was so nervous and flubbed his jumps. I laughed at Yakov’s expression when Yuri received high marks in spite of his mistakes, and his bewilderment when Yuri surprised him with a hug.

He didn’t medal, but the score had been enough for him to advance to the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona. I was so proud I covered my mouth. His mother, kneeling to my right, put her hands on my shoulders and gently squeezed.

Yuri called me from the hotel a while later, when Makka and I were already in bed. Makka had settled on Yuri’s pillow and periodically licked my forehead. I felt for my phone in the dark.

“Did you watch it, Viktor?” Yuri sounded out of breath.

“Are you serious? Of course I watched. We all watched you. Didn’t you get my message?”

“It must not have come through.” He sighed. “I’m sorry I wasn’t better.”

“We’ll work on that. Where are you now? I can hear cars.”

“I’m not sure; I went for a walk.”

“Be careful. And don’t catch a chill! We can’t afford for you to get sick.”

“I’m on my way back to the hotel. Oh, I saw Yurio a while ago.”

“How is he?”

“Angry,” Yuri laughed.

“He’s disappointed, naturally. He wanted gold.”

“You sound tired. Did I wake you?”

I pulled my fingers through Makka’s fur. “I don’t mind.”

“Go back to sleep. I’ll be home tomorrow. My flight gets in late. You’ll be in bed by the time I get there, but I’ll let you know when I land.”

“Okay. We can work on the exhibition skate. I’ve given it some thought. I think you will be pleased.”

“I can’t wait.”

* * *

I like to surprise people. I like to surprise Yuri best of all, so the following evening, when he messaged to say he’d completed the first leg of his trip and was waiting to board his last flight, Makka and I took the train to Fukuoka to meet him.

We waited over an hour for his flight to arrive. A few people recognized me and asked for pictures or if they could pet Makka. I bought a pastry to eat and nervously tore it into pieces, feeding every third one to the dog. He thumped his tail against the floor.

I had no idea why I was so anxious, but every time I checked my watch against the estimated arrival time, my heart seemed to rise higher in my chest until it was practically in my throat. The status on the monitors updated from “arriving” to “landed” and I blamed my shaking hands on coffee.

He hadn't expected me to come. When Makka jumped up onto the glass, planting his front paws on it, Yuri’s eyes shot open and when he saw me, he began to run toward the exit doors. I ran as well and threw out my arms for him. People were watching but I didn’t care. I wrapped around him and he held me just as tightly.

He rested against my shoulder on board the train, playing idly with my hand. He bowed his head and kissed it as the train rattled away from the station. With him by my side, I no longer felt unsettled.

  
illustration by Ludicrouslyidiotic

* * *

Once we’d reached the front entrance to the house, Makka trotted up to the now familiar front door, his tail waving hello, but Yuri lingered at the street. It was empty, only the two of us and the multi-colored lights on the sign announcing the hot spring.

“Would you …” he began and cleared his throat. “Would you like to watch a movie?”

It was already quite late. I caressed his jaw, understanding his meaning. “Of course. Would you prefer your room or mine?”

“Yours.”

“Makkachin will be delighted by your company.”

He smiled with his mouth closed but looked pleased. “Do you think my parents are still awake?”

“They were planning to wait up for you. They want to celebrate.”

“I know I didn’t medal, but I did qualify for the Grand Prix Final. May I claim an exception to the katsudon rule tomorrow?”

“Just this once.” I winked. “Consider it a thank you from Makkachin and me.”

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to see your city.”

“We’ll go another time.”

The lights reflected suddenly brighter in his eyes, and then he closed them. When I bent to kiss his cheek, it was damp.

“Come inside, Yuri,” I whispered. “You must be exhausted. We’ll visit with your family for a while and then we can go upstairs.”

“I’ll fall asleep on you.”

“I _like_ when you sleep on me,” I said, which made him laugh.

The front door opened. “Are you going to stand out there all night?” Mari called.

“Mari! You’re still up?” Yuri said. “We’re coming in”

We passed by her into the house. She stopped Yuri with a hand to his shoulder. “Congratulations,” she said. “Does this mean I can go with you to Barcelona?”

Yuri blinked rapidly. “You want to come with me?”

She glanced to me and then back to him. “Yes. You’re my brother and I’d like to support you.”

He didn’t reply right away and she continued.

“Please? I haven’t had a vacation in years. I need to get out of here.”

“Of course you can come,” Yuri said and dipped his head.

She actually smiled at him, and after releasing his shoulder, cast her eyes to me. “I left you a basket of towels behind the desk. I know how much you enjoy folding them.”

“Very funny!” I said.

It wasn’t funny at all, more like something I would say to Yurio or even to Chris, and that’s when it struck me: Mari treated me as a younger brother.

I’d never had a sibling. The closest I’d come had been my rink mates, I supposed; people I had spent years with. That Yuri’s elder sister would treat me like a member of her family meant the world! Affection for her flooded my chest and I couldn't stop myself from grinning.

“What?” she said, narrowing her eyes. She took a step backwards. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“No reason,” I said. “Come, Yuri. Let’s say hello to your parents.”

“Do I have something on my face? Hey, don’t walk away from me. I’m talking to you, Vicchan. Yuri, tell him to come back here. Yuri! Why are you both laughing?”

* * *

No one in his family was surprised when Yuri announced he was going to bed, nor did they bat an eye when I went with him. We changed into our sleep clothes and settled on my bed with the laptop in front of us. He selected something in English and I leaned over to kiss him once he’d pressed play.

“In case you fall asleep,” I said. It was already quite late.

He did, of course. I set the computer on the nightstand and lay down beside him, Makka curled in the bend of my knees.


	12. Chapter 12

Eight months after I first came to Hasetsu, Yuri and I packed for our flight to Spain for the Grand Prix Final. We took two bags: one containing our clothing, and the second his skates and costumes. He’d still refused me a first-class seat but allowed the change to business class, and said nothing about the upgraded hotel view, going immediately to the window upon check-in and placing his hand against the glass.

I stepped up behind him and kissed the base of his neck. “Beautiful.”

“I’ve never been to Spain.”

“Spain is _also_ beautiful,” I said.

He ducked his face toward his shoulder. “Viktor…”

“Can’t I compliment you?” I checked the time. It was eight hours earlier in Barcelona than Hasetsu, and we had been traveling for nearly twenty-four. “Do you feel up to having dinner?”

“Would you mind if we ordered it to the room?” Yuri asked, leaning back against me.

“Not at all. What would you like?”

“Pick for me. I’m going to shower.”

“If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll join you.”

He blushed and chewed his lip, but nodded and went into the bathroom. It was separated from the room by a clear pane of glass, so I could see him as he disrobed. I sat on the bed with my back to him, to give him a few moments’ privacy as I read the menu. His clothes made soft noises where they fell.

“Oh, you said to remind you to ask the hotel to steam your suit!” he said.

“Thank you.” I jotted a note on the tablet beside the phone and dialed room service. Yuri and I both liked seafood, so I had scallops and fish sent up, and a chocolate platter to surprise him. The food would take forty minutes, they said, so I slipped from my own clothes and joined him in the shower. It was behind a frosted glass door, the floor white marble. I kissed him up against the cold wall until he yawned.

“I know you’re tired,” I said, “but you should try to stay awake as long as possible. It will make tomorrow easier.”

He pulled my head down. “More kissing, less lecturing.”

Warm and clean, we dressed in hotel robes and lounged on the bed beside the window, Yuri along my front. “I can’t believe it's been a year since we met,” I said, trailing a hand along his arm.

“If you count that as meeting. It doesn’t really count.”

“Why wouldn't it count?”

Just then came a sharp knock at the door—the food arriving.

We ate freely from both plates. I fed him off of my fork and kissed him between bites. I had been right to order dessert. It earned me a sound reward, but Yuri was too tired for my reciprocation, so I offered to make coffee.

“I'm fine,” he said, closing his eyes. “I just need to sleep for a while.”

“It’s only seven o’clock!”

He smiled through a yawn. “Wake me in an hour?”

I made coffee for myself and read a book while stroking his hair. When an hour had passed, I laid the book down and pressed kisses to his mouth. “Yuri? Yuri, my love, you asked me to wake you. It’s after eight. We could go up to the pool? I imagine the stars are magnificent.”

He didn't stir.

He would probably sleep for the night, or at least the next few hours. His short program wasn’t until the day after tomorrow, so he had time to adjust. I changed into my swim trunks, took the whisky from the free mini bar (a note to other hotels: you should offer this amenity), and went up to the rooftop pool.

It offered a spectacular view. The last time I’d been in Barcelona, I’d been twenty-one or twenty-two, and winning was the only thing I’d cared about. Tonight, I didn't have any of the pre-competition nerves that would have plagued me if I were still competing. I wondered, if I hadn't left to coach him, would Yuri have qualified without me? Or would he have given up his career and gone to work for his parents? I would be in the running for my sixth world championship, not in this pool. Yuri wouldn’t be in our room because it wouldn't be _our_ room at all, but a suite for one on a higher floor. I would have flown here first class and drunk all the champagne they could bring, feeling as empty as the glasses afterwards.

I was happy Chris found me before I met my death in the frigid water. The onsen had spoiled me. We had drinks poolside and chatted for an hour, until both of us shook from the cold.

“I want to say hello to your better half,” Chris said, and since we had both been drinking, it sounded like a brilliant idea.

In retrospect, the two of us jumping into bed with Yuri might _not_ have been a brilliant idea, but I laughed at Yuri’s scrunched-up frown once Chris had untangled himself from both of us and said goodnight.

“Are you really refusing to warm me up?” I pouted when we were alone.

“Shower,” Yuri ordered through a yawn.

I didn’t have to ask him to come with me this time. He ran the water so hot, the small room clouded with steam, and hazy from the alcohol, I lolled my head against the partition and let him wash me until my skin was pink.

“There,” he said and laced our hands together. The water beat pleasantly over both of us.

I licked my lips. “Did you want to finish what we started earlier? If I remember correctly, I owe you something.”

“Not right now.”

“What’s wrong? Are you upset that I was with Chris?”

“What? No. I’m nervous about this weekend.”

“I would be concerned if you were not. Is there anything I can do?”

He shook his head against my neck. “What time is it?”

“I have no idea. I could arrange for a massage if you think it would help.”

He shuddered at the suggestion. “I don’t want a stranger touching me right now.”

I grinned against his hair. “I have two hands that know you very well.”

“Tomorrow,” he laughed, pulling back enough to kiss me softly. “Aren’t you tired yet?”

“You’re going back to sleep already?”

He tapped my forehead. “I thought my coach would want me well rested before such an important event.”

I sighed. “You’re right. Tomorrow then.”

He shut off the water and opened the shower door. The inward rush of cooler air caused my skin to prickle and I hissed at the unpleasant sensation. Yuri threw a bath sheet over my head like a net and dried my hair. I thought he might dry the rest of me, but seconds later, I heard a running sink, the furious scrub of a toothbrush.

* * *

Yuri set the alarm and woke me in time for the breakfast buffet, one of the finest spreads I’ve had in any hotel!

“We must come back here on holiday,” I said, starting on my second plate. Yuri had eaten modestly and watched me over a cup of tea.

“Do you want your picture taken with the buffet?” he asked dryly.

I handed him my phone. “Would you? Thank you. I haven’t posted anything today.”

He sighed, but he did oblige me.

We took our time getting to the public practice that morning. Yuri yawned three times during the ride and pushed his glasses to the top of his head, continually rubbing his eyes.

“Don’t say it,” he told me when I opened my mouth. I pretended to yawn as well and he rolled his eyes at my performance.

He was strangely relaxed as he skated, unfazed by Yurio’s glares. Even JJ, who sought to remind all of us of his presence, failed to derive so much as a blink from him.

Since I had been lax in my coaching duties yesterday, I suggested we make it an early night, but Yuri wanted to see Barcelona. Who was I to deny him? Some food, a few hours of shopping, and he would likely beg for sleep.

My plan backfired. I was tired long before he was, my feet sore and swollen from walking all afternoon. Instead of wearing him out, each passing hour stripped him of his composure, until he reminded me of the skittish young man guzzling champagne a year ago.

I bought hot wine, thinking it would calm him, forgetting he doesn’t drink in advance of a competition. I drank it myself. I thought of telling him about the exhibition costumes, hidden in brown paper at the bottom of the second suitcase along with a CD and my skates. It would give him something to look forward to. But I could already imagine his guilt if, somehow, he didn’t medal. No. Those things needed to remain a secret.

After a dispute over a bag we’d mislaid, I held his hand and was quiet. He led us through a Christmas market and stopped in front of a jewelry store. Yuri is a creature of habit. Change of any kind unsettles him. And so I stood, flabbergasted, behind him at the counter while he asked about a wedding ring.

Had he lost his mind? Perhaps he was delirious from lack of sleep, or maybe there had been something in the food earlier—those unusual spices! He couldn’t really be buying what I thought he was buying.

He grabbed my hand and thrust it across the counter to be measured.

“Should I measure yours as well?” the shop attendant asked Yuri, and since I could not find my voice, I looked at him, widening my eyes in question. He smiled in return and I nodded.

“Would you like that in the same design or may I show you something else?” she asked.

“The same,” I said, unable to look away from him.

I lay down a credit card. The attendant took it. “I’ll wrap that for you,” she said.

Yuri fumbled with his bag outside the store, trying to present its contents to me. I had pocketed mine.

“Not here,” I said. “Let’s …” and glancing around, attempted to get my bearings. My hands were shaking. “The cathedral isn’t far. You wanted to see it, didn’t you?”

Inside the grand cathedral, a choir sang. We found a bright, secluded alcove and Yuri removed my glove. He slid the ring onto my right hand and the massive bells resounded throughout the cathedral, cementing us.

This was not an act of spontaneity. Our lives had long since become entwined. Inseparable. This ring was a symbol of that permanence and I presented him with mine.

When no one was watching, I kissed him to consecrate it. We took a single photograph with my phone and continued our walk, arms around one another.

“Let’s get something to eat,” I said to my fiancé, and we met up with his sister and Minako for dinner.

* * *

A lesson my mother has repeatedly tried to instill in me from the time I could understand language is that one should never make assumptions.

In this case, if I had not assumed that Yuri remembered our time in Sochi, if I had not assumed that the YouTube video had been made as a form of indirect wooing, that he’d made it to lure me to Hasetsu, I would not have Yuri’s ring on my hand right now.

Still, I felt absurd when, not an hour after our engagement, he confessed to our collective friends that he had no memories of the Sochi banquet.

“I couldn’t even talk to Viktor!” Yuri said of the banquet and I spit my beer across the table, whipping out my phone to show him the evidence of that evening. Chris did the same. Yuri turned the same shade as the awful carpet in our Moscow hotel room but was spared further recollections of his pole-dancing prowess by Chris, who took note of our matching rings, and Phichit, who announced to the entire restaurant that we’d just been married.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” I said, holding my hand up with delight. “This is an engagement ring. We’ll get married after he wins gold. Right, Yuri?”

You cannot blame me for trying to motivate him.

We walked as a group back to the hotel. In the lobby, we bid our friends goodnight and they wished us well in our engagement--even Mari, who asked to see the rings up close. Chris made a lewd parting comment and smacked my ass, and Yuri shocked everyone by putting an arm around my back.

“Hey, hands off,” he said. “He’s mine.”

I grinned triumphantly at Chris over my shoulder as we boarded the elevator.

But as it rose, I began to agonize over Yuri’s lack of memories of the banquet. Just how little did he recall? He had no memory of speaking to me, of dancing with me, of me helping him back to his room. It followed that he had no memory of the invitation to breakfast or begging me to come to Hasetsu. That meant the YouTube video had been unintentional as well, my feelings for him in April one-sided, and my advances toward him when I first arrived in Hasetsu utterly vulgar.

We set the shopping bags in a colorful gathering against the bathroom’s glass partition and I wilted onto the first bed.

“Viktor?” Yuri knelt down in front of me.

“Hm?” I smiled in the way that Yuri says is patently false. He pressed a hand to my cheek.

“What’s wrong?”

“You really don’t remember anything from that night?” I asked.

He licked his lips and took a breath. “I remember seeing you there. I remember thinking I should apologize for walking away from you after the final, at the stadium, but being too afraid to speak to you.”

I kissed him briefly. “Why did you walk away?”

“I don’t know,” Yuri said. “I admired you so much, I was humiliated when you spoke to me.”

“Yuri …” I swallowed. “You don’t remember dancing with me at the banquet? You don’t remember asking me to coach you?”

His eyes went round. “What?”

I laughed helplessly. “You asked me to coach you, in front of everyone. You begged me! You told me to come to Japan. Yuri, we danced together longer than anyone. I even helped you up to your room. That’s where you told me about Hasetsu.” I wiped my eyes. “You don’t remember any of it?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I wish I did.” Yuri laid his head on my lap.

“No wonder you were so confused when I came to Japan. I must’ve seemed like an asshole!”

He lifted his head. “Did you send up the breakfast tray? In Sochi, the hotel delivered food before I checked out but I hadn’t ordered it.”

I smoothed the hair back from his eyes. “You hadn’t eaten at the party.”

His face fell. “Why didn’t you say something sooner?”

It sounded simple now that he said it. “I thought you were embarrassed and didn’t want to talk about it.”

“I made a fool of myself and I didn’t even know it!”

“Yuri, no one could take their eyes off you.”

He sat up, facing away from me with his back against the bed, and tucked his knees to his chest, the way he’d done the afternoon we’d sat on the beach. He rested his chin on them.

“Was that all I did?” he asked. “The dancing? I didn't…”

“You didn’t take advantage of me, if that's your concern. Nor did I take advantage of you.”

Groaning, he lowered his face to his knees. “Did you mean what you said at dinner?”

I tried to remember what I’d said. “That I want you to win gold?”

“That you want to … that if I do, we’re going to … that you want to get married.”

I’d thought exchanging rings in a cathedral would have made that clear, but assumptions had led us to this point. They didn’t need to continue. I crouched beside him on the floor and took his hands.

“I’m in love with you, Yuri. I don’t ever want to be apart from you.”

He gave a faint smile, and the slip of his tongue left behind a lovely sheen on his lips. He put his mouth against my ear and in the sultry voice he often used before his short program, whispered, “Then I’m going to kiss you.”

“And then?”

“Then you’re going to kiss me. And we’re going to get into that bed and continue kissing each other until we fall asleep.”

“That’s a good plan.”

“No clothes,” he added.

I grinned. “That’s a better plan.”

He kissed me with a light touch to my face, his thumb brushing the corner of my lips. And when we were naked beneath the sheets, he kissed with passion, with his eyes squeezed tight, and without fear.


	13. Chapter 13

The next morning was the most beautiful of my life, waking beside the man I would spend the rest of mine with. I was overcome with emotion, like the sun ascending inside my ribcage, and with my lips I worshipped every inch of his skin that I could reach without waking him. I hovered at his lips, kissing him again and again, but he didn’t stir.

As happy as I would have been to remain like this all morning, he had a competition today, and I would not be selfish. I dressed in the dark and went out.

For once, my mother and I were in the same timezone, and since it was a weekend, she would not be working. I went to the rooftop and sat in a lounge chair facing the pool. The wind chased ripples across the surface of the pale blue water.

Her face filled my phone screen, the same shape as mine, though her hair and eyes are dark, as mine might have been.

“It’s nice of you to call your old mother,” she said. “It’s been what, three months?”

“I’m sorry I’ve neglected you. I’ve been busy.”

“I know. I see the pictures you post. The last one says you’re in Barcelona.”

“For the Grand Prix Final.” The wind whipped the hair around my eyes. I swallowed and prepared myself for what I was about to say. “Mama … I’ve met someone.”

Her face was impassive. “I wondered when you were going to tell me.”

“I’ve been worried about disappointing you, that it’s not what you would wish for me. Are you upset?”

“Am I upset that my son is happy? No, though I wish you’d told me instead of letting me find out about it through the television. Does he love you?”

Blushing, I held up my hand for her to see. She touched her lips and her eyes softened.

“Oh, Vitya. I am happy for you.”

“He skates this afternoon. I don’t know if you get the channel, but it would mean a great deal to me if you would watch.”

“I’ve missed watching _you_ perform.”

“I’m thinking of returning,” I said.

“And what about your Yuri?”

I smiled involuntarily at his name. “Maybe I could do both. Compete and coach him.”

“If anyone is capable, it is you. Is he there with you?”

“He’s asleep. I promise we’ll call you together soon.”

“Just don’t wait three months.” She smiled and I knew I was forgiven. “I haven’t seen you this giddy since we got Makka. How is he?”

“Fat,” I said, “and very happy. He’s back home in Japan with Yuri’s family.”

“They accept you?”

“They do.”

“Then I approve of them,” she said. “When are you coming to see me?”

We spoke about her job and her wicked cat. By the time we’d disconnected, my phone had lost twenty percent battery life, but nothing could have put a damper on the day, not even Yuri Plisetsky, who found me a short while later admiring the beaches.

I might’ve been affected by his childish taunts a year ago, the cruel things he said about my Yuri, about the ring on my hand, but now I only pitied him. His words were not a reflection on us, but his own envy of what Yuri and I had found in one another.

* * *

I had never considered how a ring, a mere trinket, might alter my perception. It was only a bit of metal worn on the fourth finger of my right hand, plain polished gold, less ornate than other pieces I owned and less expensive. And yet! And yet, walking along the seawall that morning, I felt elevated, as though everything in my life up until that moment existed hundreds of miles beneath me, shrunken like models on a toy train set.

All of the details that make up life seemed altogether insignificant: my bills, my apartment, even my career had overnight become out-of-focus blocks in my periphery. There was only a steady sureness in the shape of a gold band.

I found myself making a show of it: placing my right hand on top of my left when I laid them on the concierge desk, raising that hand to call for the elevator and letting it hover above the button where it caught the light. Rubbing my thumb idly across the mirrored surface of the metal, I pitied everyone around me who was ignorant of love. I pitied the man I’d been, who’d thought he didn’t want or need it.

It was as though I was a different person. I didn't know this Viktor. He didn't care about costumes or program music or the difficulty of a jump sequence, and he didn't care what people might think of him. His only concern was for the man sleeping in their hotel room, returning to him as quickly as possible.

I had never felt so strongly for another person as I did for Yuri, never needed anyone but myself. Figure skating is a solitary sport. In the moments that matter, you are alone on the ice and no one, not even the most gifted coach, can aid you. So it must be in life, I’d always thought. A year ago, the devotion I felt toward Yuri would’ve terrified me, but now I couldn't wait to get back to the room, to catch him in bed and spend the afternoon there. It would not be enough; I would have to share him come evening, but I would spend the rest of my life waking beside him. No one else would have that privilege.

He was still sleeping when I reentered the room. I undressed and gently, gently got into the bed with him, jostling the mattress as little as possible. He instinctively curled into my chest.

“Where were you?” He brought his mouth up to kiss mine. He tasted of sleep. “You’re freezing!”

“I went for a walk. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I’d intended for us both to sleep more, but Yuri had other ideas. He continued to kiss me, his kisses growing more passionate with each breath. One hand crept to my chest, the other between us, and before long I was gasping his name and a litter of words he didn’t understand.

“I like when I make you forget English,” he whispered, his syllables slurred together. He cleaned his hand on the sheet and settled next to me so our faces were even on the pillows.

“What about you?” I asked, nuzzling his cheek, prepared to do whatever he asked, whatever he desired, but he shook his head.

“Tonight.”

“Are you sure it wouldn’t relax you?”

“Tonight,” he promised. As I stroked his hair, my eyes followed the gleam of metal on my hand.

* * *

After Yuri’s short program that evening, which had been good but not good enough to beat Yurio’s (which, incidentally, had been _so_ good it broke my short program record), I went to the stands where the other skaters watched. They were in costume; I was in my coach’s suit and coat but sat down with them anyway. Yuri and I watched the rest of the programs together, my hand seeking his hand, bringing the rings together.

“When we get back to the hotel,” he said, leaning to speak into my ear, “there’s something I want to talk to you about.”

“Okay,” I said and kissed him since no one was watching. I thought it must be in regards to where we’d left off that morning in bed.

Anticipation is a great aphrodisiac.

What he had to say, however, was not.

A skater’s heart is as fragile as glass. Twenty-four hours after making me the happiest I’ve ever been, Yuri Katsuki shattered mine.

He’d had to make a phone call home, so I’d showered to give him privacy. He’d already hung up when I got out of the shower and sat on the bed looking out the window at the dark city below. I made use of the plush hotel robe and slippers, and sat in front of him on the window seat to dry my hair.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked, hoping it had something to do with his promise from that morning or a modification to his long program tomorrow. Maybe he’d decided against the exhibition we’d planned. No problem. He was entitled to his own; we’d simply use the costumes another time.

He locked his hands on his knees. “After the final, let’s end this.”

I was stunned for an instant, processing his words. End it? End what? Any answer was unacceptable. I felt like I’d been kicked. My eyes stung with uncontrollable tears and the hotel robe, which had felt luxurious moments earlier, began to suffocate me. He was still talking ( _“... more than enough for me … my last season ... Thank you for everything, Viktor. Thank you ...”_ ) but I couldn’t get past his first sentence.

Was he firing me? Breaking our engagement? Both? I couldn’t stand the thought of losing him. My throat closed up. I heard myself curse and call him selfish—I didn’t care that I was crying! I could hardly get my breath.

He moved the hair away from my eyes and I felt exposed.

“What, Yuri?” I snapped. “What are you looking at?”

“I’m surprised to see you cry,” he said gently.

I snatched his wrist. “I’m mad, okay?”

“You’re the one who said it was only until the Grand Prix Final!”

“I thought you’d eventually decide you wanted my help more!” I shook all over, hot like I’d been from the sunburn, but the pain was in my chest this time. My stomach churned and I feared I would throw up.

“Aren’t you going to make a comeback?” he said. “You don’t have to worry about me—”

“How can you tell me to come back when you’re talking about retiring?”

“This is not fair to you!”

“That is _my_ decision! If you want to quit, quit, but don’t use me as an excuse.” I stood up and put half the room between us.

“Viktor, people have been saying it all year. They want you to come back. _You_ want to come back, I know you do! I saw the way you watched the short programs today. You miss this!”

It was becoming harder to breathe. “I don’t want to go back to the way it was! I don’t want any of this without you, Yuri, don’t you understand?”

“I’ll still be with you,” he said, approaching me as one might a startled animal, slowly, with his hands raised, “just not as a competitor. I’m grateful to you for everything you’ve done for me, but we both know I can’t keep competing at this level.”

“After all you’ve accomplished, you _still_ think you’re not good enough. Was me being with you all this time not enough to convince you?”

A sob built in my chest and tore out of me. Yuri closed the distance between us and put his arms around my neck.

“Shh,” he said. “It’s all right.”

I shoved him away. “It’s _not_ all right! We just found each other and now you’re going to leave!”

He wrung his hands together but stayed a few inches away. “ _Viktor_ … I’m not leaving you. Why would you say that?”

“Then why are you doing this? You don’t have to do this! You’re only twenty-four. You have years ahead of you; why would you throw them away?”

My throat had closed. I wheezed my next breath.

“Viktor, Viktor, here, shh, lie down with me, okay?” He took the towel from around my neck and dried my face, then undressed and helped me into bed, pulling the covers over both of us.

I kissed him desperately.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to make you upset.”

I couldn’t stop shaking. “Kiss me. Please kiss me, Yuri.”

He did, until I had quieted.

“I’m not leaving you,” he whispered against my lips. “But I know how much this sport means to you. I won’t keep you from that.”

“I’m on the ice with you every day!”

“You know that isn’t what I mean.”

I touched his face. “We could find you another coach, if that’s the problem, someone more experienced—”

“No.” He brushed a thumb across my mouth. “I want you to be the last coach I ever have.”

“Then I’ll stay your coach!” I begged.

“Viktor …” He sighed. “How would that even work?”

“I don’t know. You could come with me back to Russia! We could work there so I would have access to Yakov, and we could visit your family as often as you like. Or we could figure out a way to stay in Japan. I could find someone else to train me.”

“And what if you’re in Canada one weekend and I’m supposed to be in France? What do we do then?”

I was reminded of a tutor who used to pose mathematical calculations that I was supposed to answer aloud. “Off the top of my head, I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out. Maybe we’ll hire an assistant coach for when I can’t be there. Or I wouldn’t have to compete in as many things as I used to.”

“You’d turn down the chance at another championship?”

My eyes filled with tears again at his dismissal. “Won’t you think about it? Please, Yuri, won’t you at least think about it before you say no?”

He sighed and kissed me with a hand wrapped around the back of my neck. “Okay. I promise I won’t make any decisions until after my long program, but you have to think too. About what you really want.”

“I will.” I inserted my leg between his and put a hand on his hip to encourage him. “But not right now.”

“No, not right now,” he agreed.

We clutched each other well into the night. Love is sweetest after a disagreement.

  
illustration by Ludicrouslyidiotic

* * *

Yuri was tender with me in the morning, waking first to bring me tea, and then he sat partially upright holding me against his chest as I drank it. His fingers traced nonsense on my back.

Mornings would remain like this if I returned to skating, wouldn’t they? That wouldn’t change. We would still love each other. And what if Yuri _did_ retire? I would still want him. I would want him if he never took another step on the ice, if he ate nothing but katsudon for the rest of our lives. No matter what happened, I knew that I could never want anyone else.

“That feels nice,” I said, setting my cup aside. His heart beat against my ear. “I like waking up with you.”

“We don’t have to be anywhere until this afternoon,” Yuri murmured. “You could go back to sleep and do it again in an hour.”

“What time is it?” It was still dark outside.

“Early. I don’t think they’re serving breakfast yet.”

“Stay with me?” I said and he began to rock me slowly.

* * *

We stayed in bed until the final hour breakfast was offered, and even knowing we could come back to bed after eating, that Yuri would doubtless spend the day by my side, I was reluctant to get up.

Breakfast fortified me. Rather than return to the room, we crossed the walkway across the Ronda Litoral and explored the beachfront along the Mediterranean. It was too cold to sunbathe, but we enjoyed a light lunch with his sister and Minako before Yuri’s afternoon practice. We stayed late, through the ladies’ short programs and the senior pairs ceremony, but I was happy to sit in the stands with him, to lean my head against his as we both grew tired.

Chris came by our hotel room for a drink, and once he’d gone to meet his boyfriend, Yuri and I turned in early. “By this time tomorrow,” I said, settling into him, “you could already have a gold medal.”

“I could also come in last place again,” he mumbled. His words came out slowly, as though his mouth was filled with something thick.

“You could,” I agreed, finding his mouth to kiss it, “but you won’t.”

* * *

I understand why the singles free skates are scheduled last on Saturday, but there is something to be said for going first. Less of a chance that nerves will catch up with you. Maybe that’s why I used to sleep until the last minute before a competition. Tonight, my heart beat like a thousand wings.

Saturday night, I changed into my suit as Yuri got ready for his long program, joining him in the bathroom to style his hair, then muss it up and style it again. Before we left the room, I kissed him good luck in the manner I would not be able to once the cameras were on us.

He kept hold of my hand in the elevator, in the car, squeezing hard as we entered the arena, and I stayed close to him in the manner he preferred: steady and silent, his badge with mine around my neck. He was unusually calm--was it for my benefit, to avoid upsetting me again? To prove that he would be all right without me? Maybe. It was undoubtedly an act, but that he’d put on a brave face for my sake told me how much it meant to him that I make this decision without worrying about his reaction.

The fact of the matter was, Yuri was right. I _did_ desire to return to competition--of course I wanted to return!--but I wouldn’t if it meant sacrificing the love between us, if it meant I forced him into retirement. However, if _he_ was confident that we would stay together regardless, if _he_ possessed that faith, so could I.

* * *

Yuri’s long program was magnificent, the culmination of our season together. I’ve never been so proud of anyone in my life, or been so pleased to have had a record broken. Yuri stared wordlessly at the monitor overhead that displayed his score, the highest ever for the men’s long program, a record I had long held.

I offered my hand and drew him against me.

“Having both Yuris beat my records is the ultimate bliss as your choreographer and coach,” I said into his shoulder, “but it’s the ultimate diss as your competitor.”

Yuri pulled away enough that he could look me in the eye. “Does this mean you’ll come back?”

I smiled at him, because it is impossible not to smile at him. “How else am I going to reclaim my record? I only hope my knees survive another season. I’m going to have to land a lot of quads to beat Yuri Katsuki.”

Laughing, he wrapped his arms around my neck. I could feel him shaking, the dampness on his face.

“Why are you crying, my love?” I asked, stroking a hand over his hair.

He kissed my cheek. “I’m happy.”

We went into the back for interviews, though I poked my head out to cheer for Chris, who skated next. While Yuri was speaking with reporters, I heard Yakov’s grumbling around a corner; Yurio must be making his way toward the ice. I took it as a sign.

“I’ll be right back,” I called to Yuri and left my things on a chair.

I wonder sometimes how many of Yakov’s gray hairs are my doing. He has been like a father to me for over half of my life, and present for every major excitement and disappointment from the time I was twelve years old.

He never said he was happy that I’d decided to come back; in the coming months, he would continue to remind me that he had said taking a year off was a mistake in the first place! But in that hallway in Barcelona, I could see in the crinkling around his eyes how much my return meant to him, how much I meant to him. Even Lilia smiled.

I hugged Yurio to me. “Don’t forget what it is _you_ want. Now is the time to take off.”

And he did.


	14. Chapter 14

In the end, Yuri didn’t win the gold medal in Barcelona. Beating my record hadn’t been quite enough. He lost to Yuri Plisetsky by one twelfth of a point.

But in the euphoria of his accomplishment, he agreed to compete another season—with me as his coach _and_ rival.

That evening, I revealed the surprise I had hidden from him since we’d left Japan: my rose and gold costume from the season before; its blue complement, expertly tailored to his measurements; and a variation of the aria which had brought us together—a duet. He wept when I played it for him.

“I don’t know what to say,” he said.

“We don’t have to use this. Any of it. Tomorrow is your moment. You should do what you want.”

He dried his eyes and, leaning over the suitcase, kissed me slowly. “Imagine the crowd’s reaction when you skate out to me. We’ll practice it in the morning.” He drew a thumb across my lip. I bit at it playfully.

“Are you mad I announced my comeback now?”

Yuri raised an eyebrow. “Are you mad I didn’t win gold?”

“We will be good at this, I think.” I kissed his forehead and lay down on the bed in my suit. “I’ll have to move back to Russia before the Nationals. You won’t be able to come until later. Assuming you want to come with me. How _is_ this going to work?”

“We’ll figure it out. It’s going to be different not being with you every day.” Yuri settled next to me and took my hand. “My mother is going to miss you. And your dog.”

“And Makka will miss your mother. Speaking of mothers, we should visit mine this coming year. Have you ever been to the Netherlands?”

“No. Do you think she’ll approve of me?”

“She will adore you, because I adore you.” I kissed each of his knuckles, brushing my lips over the smooth metal of his engagement band. “I told her about you.”

He brightened, a delicate flush settling over his cheeks. “Really?”

“Mhm. I called her while you were sleeping yesterday morning.” I flung my free arm across my face. “Oh, I’m going to have to pack all my things again! It’s going to take an eternity. Is there a moving service in Hasetsu?”

Yuri laughed softly. “I’ll help you and so will Mari. Maybe you could leave your room as it is? Or we could move some of your things in with mine, so when we’re in Japan we have a place to stay. I’m sure my parents would like their banquet room back.”

“I don’t like that I’ll be away from you.”

“It’s only for a few weeks.” He squeezed my hand. “Viktor, will you promise me something?”

“Anything.”

“I know you think you can do both, and I’m not saying I don’t believe you, but you must tell me if it gets to be too much. I don’t want you to resent me.”

“I think we will survive for a few years, but I do promise. The question is what will we do after that?”

“Hmm. Maybe I’ll teach skating at the Ice Castle.”

I considered that. “I like it in Hasetsu. I can see myself living there indefinitely. Not with your parents, though. Something with a view of the ocean.”

“Okay.” He sighed pleasantly. “I can’t believe you came all that way, Viktor. Sometimes it still feels like a dream.”

I brushed the hair from his eyes and removed his glasses. “I knew I wouldn't stop thinking about you until I saw you again.”

Yuri smirked. “Even with _your_ memory?”

I gasped in mock hurt. “I’m not the one who forgot our first meeting! I can't believe you ever thought you needed to be food in order to seduce me. After all, I have first-hand experience with your ability to move in sensual ways.”

Yuri buried his face in my shoulder and groaned. “Please don’t talk about that.”

“You were charming, my love. I’ve never enjoyed a banquet that much. Are you planning on a repeat performance tomorrow evening?”

“Absolutely not!”

“Chris will be most disappointed. Perhaps you and I can drink champagne together and you can give me a private performance after.”

“Viktor…” He covered his face.

“At the wedding, then. All right.”

He peered at me through a gap in his fingers. “You really want to spend your life with me?”

“I _am_ spending my life with you. I want to have a party to celebrate.”

“It’s unfortunate we can’t do it any time soon.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning.

“You said we’d get married after I win a gold medal. That might take a while.”

“We don’t actually have to wait.”

Yuri held up a hand in protest. “No, that was your condition. We’re going to honor it.”

“I only said that to motivate you!”

“You said it to manipulate me into another season. You can’t wait to compete against me, can you.”

Beaming, I shook my head. “Will you watch me?”

He pulled me in by my tie and smiled against my lips. “What do you think?”

“I think I’ve created a monster. Does this mean you’ll meet me at the kiss and cry?”

“I’m certainly not letting anyone _else_ kiss you,” Yuri said and demonstrated his claim.

“It wouldn’t make you nervous?”

He slowly shook his head, so our lips brushed with each pass. “I’ll be your biggest fan.”

“You _are_ my biggest fan,” I whispered and kissed him again. “However, if it would make you too uncomfortable, I understand.”

“What does your apartment look like?”

I lowered my mouth to his neck. His skin tasted faintly of the sea. “I think I have pictures on my phone. It’s very bright. There are a lot of windows. In fact, I was thinking of redecorating in advance of your arrival. A very large poster of Yuri Katsuki in the entryway. What do you think?”

“No.”

“In the bedroom, then. I can’t wait for you to see it.”

“Don’t you dare!” he laughed, the sound I had come to consider home.

* * *

Two years earlier, in spite of my professional success, I’d passed the evening of my twenty-sixth birthday alone in a cold apartment. Elsewhere in the world, people were celebrating Christmas Day. I’d seen pictures of Chris’s family and the Christmas Village in Amsterdam my mother had visited. She’d called me that morning while I was still in bed; it was my first birthday without her. Being on my own had felt liberating up until then, but as the sun had begun its slow decline, I’d been struck by a sudden fear of loneliness, the fear of its permanence.

In St. Petersburg, it was overcast and very cold. A Thursday. Frost had etched intricate designs on my bedroom window that I vandalized with a fingernail.

I’d spent the morning at practice and claimed the afternoon for myself, anticipating drinks with rink mates I didn’t order, dinner with friends I didn’t bother to call back. Sasha had been home—I’d seen the light under her door when I returned from the rink and inhaled the sweet aroma of baking bread—but I didn’t ask if she had plans.

I had sat on my designer couch in the apartment my mother had called extravagant, clad in silk pajamas that cost as much as a year of rental skates, blessed with good knees and no serious injuries and more money than I could spend, and I was unhappy.

Deciding the dreary weather had caused me to be maudlin, I’d dressed in my thickest clothes and shaken Makka’s leash. He’d lumbered out of the bedroom, where he had been snoring since I returned from the rink, but he’d gone with me out of duty.

We’d covered miles, my face and toes numbed with cold by the time daylight had begun to fade, but I had walked off some of the indescribable feeling lodged in my chest. I’d breathed more calmly when we’d reached the door to my apartment building.

There had been a couple inside the lobby, gazing at one another in the way lovestruck couples do in movies. It had torn at my heart like a dull blade, and that lonely feeling crept back, compounding as Makka and I had climbed the stairs. I’d closed the door to the apartment and fallen against it. Happy birthday indeed.

Times like that, the internet is a blessing. Makka had deigned to lie with me and I’d petted him with one hand, using the other to scroll through the usual sites: the news, skating forums, social media. I’d ended up on Facebook, inundated with holiday imagery. I’d been ready the close the app and find something on television, but a recommended story caught my eye: a short interview with a rising star.

Sometimes with a picture you just know things. Cameras are magical that way, in their ability to capture not only movement but mood as well. Personality. As soon as the screen had loaded, I’d been struck by the desperation on this man’s face. He’d been photographed mid-step sequence in a plain black jacket and pants. Dark hair fell around his face and his eyes were closed. I hadn’t known him from a stranger, but I’d known instinctively that he felt as I did.

The interview had been humble. I’d been a quarter through when the app froze, taking the link and the man with it. I’d tried to find it again but failed—a fitting end to a miserable day—and went to bed.

Life had gone on. My mood had gradually improved with the weather. I’d continued to practice, and the following spring began to choreograph my routines for the coming season.

That skater, whoever he was, had remained on my mind. I’d forgotten his name, forgotten the contents of the interview, what website I’d clicked on, even which country he’d originally been from. But I never forgot the longing on his face, like he too had been abandoned, and that next season debuted the long program which had been inspired by it.

* * *

I chose to coach Yuri and I continue to coach him not only because of my love, but because of my certainty of his extraordinary talent.

Our love is what drives me to fly to my own competitions, compete, catch a redeye (and scant hours of sleep) to wherever he is, put on a suit I pray he’s had steamed for me this time (we do not talk about Paris), and coach him on coffee fumes. Sometimes we have to compete separately, having only pictures of one another to sustain us, but there is meaning behind them now.

During the skating season, the schedule is punishing. It’s worth it, however, for the times we are together, when he is the one waiting for me in the kiss and cry, when I leave the ice triumphant and fall into his arms. Or when he has given a rousing performance that leaves the audience on their feet and kisses me breathless on camera for the world to see. And I especially adore when we compete against each other, because as much as we both want to win, we want that glory for one another. He’ll send me off in costume, and I usually take a few moments to worship him, much to the crowd’s delight. Yakov has yet to get used to it.

My name is Viktor Nikiforov. I’m thirty years old, six-time world champion married to last year’s Grand Prix winner (who is currently asleep next to me with our dog). Part of me was disappointed not to maintain my consecutive wins, but it’s hard to be upset about a silver medal when there’s a wedding and a family waiting for you at home, when the person who wins gold means more to you than a disc of metal ever could and stands proudly beside you on the highest podium.

Never did I imagine I would one day have this: someone to share my life and love and passion. Someone who would give those things back to me. That I had a garden of my own, trapped behind a door I didn’t know to search for.

What a miracle it had been to find him as I did, to have fate bring us together in Sochi, to be the one to bring joy to his face and for him to bring it to mine, to see him skate the program he’d unknowingly inspired, to join him on the ice in Barcelona for its new incarnation.

As Yuri had predicted, the audience erupted when I skated out to him, when he touched a gloved hand to my cheek, when I lifted him above me! He guided me into the spiral, lowering me so I was mere inches above the ice. The aria echoed throughout the stadium like cathedral bells. I gripped Yuri’s hand and flew.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This began life as a single scene to support my headcanon that Victor had known who Yuri was when they first met. Then Jojo approached me about running the Katsudon Bang and that scene (Victor watching Yuri walk away from him in the Skating Palace) grew to span the season. 
> 
> A note on Victor's birthday: In the pilot, Victor is 27 when he wins at Sochi. We later find out his birthday is December 25, which means he would've been 28 during season one unless Sochi fell late in the year (it seems to be an early December event). It's repeated that he's 27 at the Worlds after Yuri has returned home in March, so I decided Victor was just shy of his birthday at Sochi and the commentator rounded up. 
> 
> Briefly referenced was a headcanon that Victor has [a rare disorder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griscelli_syndrome) which, in its non-fatal type, presents as hypopigmentation in children and could serve as a reason for him dedicating himself to skating so completely at such a young age. 
> 
> _Thank you to_ Sasha, who is the reason I had the courage to attempt this (and got a cameo as Victor's neighbor); Ludicrous, my wonderful artist, whose work was embedded throughout; my beta readers Lauren and Emily for their encouragement and hard work; my dogs, for providing references for Makka and being very patient with me for writing so much; and to Jojo, whose love for YOI is the reason I watched it. You’re the best co-mod a girl could wish for. 
> 
> [Art Masterpost by LudicrouslyIdiotic](http://ludicrouslyidiotic.tumblr.com/post/159251681424/katsudon-minibang-art-masterpost-aria-fic-by) | [Reference photos](https://www.pinterest.com/museaway/yoi-reference-photos/) | [Katsudon Bang](https://katsudonbang.tumblr.com/)
> 
> If you read this, please know it means more to me than I can properly express. I love this show and I loved writing this story. So many good feelings. If you'd like to reblog the tumblr post for it, it's [here](http://www.museaway.com/post/159393794655/katsudonbang-title-aria-author-museaway). ♥


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